A Catholic bishop in Belgium has declared his support for the euthanasia of elderly people.
Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp made a distinction between killing people who were old and suffering from an incurable illness and those who were young.
He also suggested that the euthanasia of the elderly was a form of killing as morally justifiable as killing an enemy on the battlefield in a just war.
In an interview with La Libre, a Belgian newspaper, Bishop Bonny said he rejected the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church that euthanasia was an intrinsic moral evil.
“This is too simple an answer that leaves no room for discernment,” he said.
“Philosophy has taught me to never be satisfied with generic black and white answers. All questions deserve answers adapted to a situation: a moral judgment must always be pronounced according to the concrete situation, the culture, the circumstances, the context.”
He said: “We will always oppose the wish of some to end a life too prematurely, but we must recognise that a request for euthanasia from a young man of 40 is not equivalent to that of a person of 90 who faces an incurable illness.
“We must learn to better define concepts and better distinguish situations.”
He continued: “It is good to remember that we cannot kill, and I am against all murders. But what is killing, what is murder?
“What do you say to someone who kills an enemy in the name of self-defence?
“What do you say to someone who has been affected by an incurable illness for years and who has decided to request euthanasia after talking to their family, their doctor, their loved ones?”
The bishop added: “It is not up to a bishop to judge the law. I rather consider its application on the ground, and it is clear that we all fear that this application is too liberal and that there are too many slippages – that requests are accepted too quickly without an alternative solution being sought.
“But the response to this shift cannot be a red card issued against all euthanasia.”
Besides euthanasia, Bishop Bonny is also in favour of married priests, women priests and same-sex blessings.
Euthanasia is denounced in the Catechism of the Catholic Church of 1992 as “an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator”.
It says that “the error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded”.
Three years later Pope St John Paul II confirmed in the papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) that euthanasia “is a grave violation of the law of God since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person”.
“This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium,” wrote John Paul.
“Depending on the circumstances, the practice involves the malice proper to suicide or murder.”
Pope Francis has also repeatedly condemned euthanasia and confirmed in Samaritanus Bonus of 2020 that the practice “is an intrinsically evil act, in every situation or circumstance”.
Euthanasia was legalised with so-called “safeguards” in Belgium in 2002, but these have been gradually removed as palliative care units have been simultaneously reduced to “houses of euthanasia” which prepare “patients and their families for lethal injections”, according to Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Lessons from Belgium, a 2018 book edited by David Albert Jones, Chris Gastmans and Calum MacKellar.
The total number of euthanasia deaths has risen incrementally and last year reached more than 3,000.
Since 2014 euthanasia has been legal for children and elderly people can also qualify on the grounds of “polypathologies”, comparatively minor and usually age-related illnesses such as hearing loss and incontinence.
Three doctors declared that Tine Nys, a young woman depressed after she was jilted by her lover, was suffering from autism to meet her demand for euthanasia, but were acquitted to applause when they were brought to trial.
In 2021, other Belgian medics broke their silence to complain of a huge personal psychological toll involved in killing patients by lethal injection, saying they were afflicted by prolonged emotional anguish and nightmares similar to those suffered by people with post-traumatic stress disorder.
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