Catholic Archbishop - Medically Assisted Suicide ‘Feasible’

What is the truth?

CNA reports Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has spoken in support of legalised medically assisted suicide, calling it “feasible” despite the clear teachings of the Catholic Church against it.

“Personally, I would not practice suicide assistance, but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in,” Paglia said in a speech on April 19 during the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy. The Italian archbishop’s remarks were part of a presentation that included a documentary about an Italian man who went to Switzerland to die by assisted suicide. A video of the discussion, in Italian, is available here.

The Italian news outlet Il Riformista published the text of Paglia’s speech on Saturday. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder” and “gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and the respect due to the living God, his Creator” (No. 2324)

More recently, in 2020, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith affirmed that teaching in its letter Samaritanus Bonus, “On the care of persons in the critical and terminal phases of life,” which was approved by Pope Francis. “The uninfringeable value of life is a fundamental principle of the natural moral law and an essential foundation of the legal order,” the letter states. “We cannot directly choose to take the life of another, even if they request it.”

Earlier this year, during his general audience on Feb. 9, Pope Francis said the dying need palliative care, not euthanasia or assisted suicide, saying: “We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate assisted suicide.”

In his remarks on April 19, Archbishop Paglia emphasized that the Church is not a “dispenser of truth pills” when it comes to engaging with a pluralistic society on the most challenging moral issues of the day.

“Theological thought evolves in history, in dialogue with the magisterium and the experience of the people of God (sensus fidei fidelium), in a dynamic of mutual enrichment,” Paglia said. Paglia pointed to Pope Francis’ decision in 2018 to revise the Catechism of the Catholic Church to state that the death penalty is “inadmissible.”

“The contribution of Christians is made within the different cultures, neither above — as if they possessed an a priori given truth — nor below — as if believers were the bearers of a respectable opinion, but disengaged from history,” Paglia continued. “Between believers and nonbelievers there is a relationship of mutual learning,” Paglia said. “As believers, therefore, we ask the same questions that concern everyone, in the knowledge that we are in a pluralistic democratic society. In this case, about the end of (earthly) life, we find ourselves all facing a common question: How can we reach (together) the best way to articulate the good (ethical plane) and the just (legal plane), for each person and for society?”

Paglia criticized the expansion of laws in some countries to permit involuntary euthanasia. At the same time, he said it was “not to be ruled out” that legalised assisted suicide “is feasible in our society,” provided certain conditions spelled out by a 2019 Italian constitutional court ruling are met. Specifically, he said, quoting from the court’s direction, “the person must be ‘kept alive by life-support treatment and suffering from an irreversible pathology, a source of physical or psychological suffering that he or she considers intolerable, but fully capable of making free and conscious decisions.’” The Italian House of Representatives has already approved such legislation, but not the Senate, he noted.

This is not the first time Paglia’s remarks on assisted suicide have stirred controversy. In 2019, answering a question about assisted suicide and whether a Catholic or a Catholic priest can be present at someone’s death by assisted suicide, Paglia told a small group of journalists that he would be willing to do so, because “the Lord never abandons anyone.”

See this article in Church Militant 

In an exclusive interview with Church Militant, an authorized spokesperson for the Pontifical Academy for Life debunked the accusations against Paglia and offered an in-depth explanation of the thinking behind the archbishop's speech.

"Far from supporting assisted dying," the PAL spokesperson maintained, "the archbishop robustly challenged unbridled self-determination and the illusory individual 'freedom of choice' found in secular discussions of assisted suicide."

Archbishop Paglia's address was published on multiple sites, including the left-leaning Italian publication Il Riformista, which ambiguously headlined it, "The time has come for a law on assisted suicide."

In the context of a ruling by Italy's Constitutional Court, Paglia said that he would "personally, not take any part in assisted suicide," but he understands how "legislation set out under strict conditions in the Constitutional Court decision 242/2019 might offer the most concretely possible common good in our current circumstances."

"The person [requesting it] must be one who is being kept alive by life-support systems and who is suffering an irreversible medical condition that is causing bodily or mental suffering that he or she considers intolerable, but who is fully capable of making free and fully informed decisions," Paglia stressed, citing the conditions specified by the ruling.

Catholic news media and social media commenters erroneously interpreted the archbishop's speech that called for "legal mediation" to achieve the "greatest common good" in complex medical cases as greenlighting laws in support of assisted suicide.

"Paglia was challenging the current overemphasis on individual self-determination," the spokesperson explained. "He was incisively pointing out how self-determination in a world of 'others' can never be exercised in a truly human fashion without taking into account how one fulfills his or her obligation to 'others' (including the terminally ill)."

In fact, the archbishop's speech lamented how "encouragement to illusory individual 'freedom of choice' appears to have led all too often to medical choices being made by interested health care providers using their 'substituted judgment' in the case of persons with reduced decision-making capability."

Paglia was also critical of how "involuntary euthanasia [is] described euphemistically as simply 'deep sedation,'" the spokesperson added. The archbishop's position is that "faced with circumstances which erode autonomy rather than strengthening it, the Church's answer is to call for truly human 'accompaniment' of the dying."

"It is impossible, in a pluralistic world, to obtain voluntary and universal acceptance, in a foreseeable time frame, of the Church's belief in the inviolability of human life," the spokesperson reasoned. "In this light, the archbishop suggested that rather than acquiescing in the situation of growing, clearly lawless, misuse of the concept of freedom, society could, awaiting better days, counter such misuse through legislation that authoritatively and explicitly limits its possibility," the spokesperson stressed. "Even that suggestion, however, comes with a caveat: We see that the Italian Constitutional Court decision that de-penalizes assisting in a suicide has been applied unequally to differing cases," PAL told Church Militant. "Courts and legislators must be alert to the fact that inconsistency in enforcement is a serious threat to justice."

On Monday, PAL issued a statement reiterating Paglia's "'no' towards euthanasia and assisted suicide, in full adherence to the Magisterium" and observed that "any further elaboration is uncalled for." The statement pointed out Paglia's reference to the Italian Constitutional Court's sentence 242/2019 and the specific Italian situation the archbishop was addressing.

"The Constitutional Court held that assisting a suicide is a crime," the statement noted. "For Abp. Paglia, it is important that the decision holds that the criminality of the act remains the same and is not overruled."

On Friday, in an exclusive meeting with Church Militant, top personnel from PAL discussed ethical, theological and philosophical issues that had surfaced in recent months and affirmed that PAL retained a "total and unqualified commitment to life and to Catholic moral teaching on life issues."

Then there's this from Crisis Magazine

The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, has exposed his contempt for life yet again. This time, he’s publicly endorsing assisted suicide while making a mangle of the Church’s moral authority.

First, Paglia channels his inner Mario Cuomo by stating, “Personally, I would not practice suicide assistance, but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in.” If the Archbishop were American, I would swear he sounds like he’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But Paglia’s endorsement of assisted suicide isn’t the real problem; his anti-life views are just a symptom of his anti-Catholic morality. He dismisses the Church’s teaching authority by stating that the Church is not a “dispenser of truth pills.” Then he states, "The contribution of Christians is made within the different cultures, neither above — as if they possessed an a priori given truth — nor below — as if believers were the bearers of a respectable opinion, but disengaged from history."

“As if they possessed an a priori given truth?”—that’s exactly what the Church possesses! While Paglia is trying to sound humble, he’s actually expressing supreme arrogance. For he is assuming that the Church comes up with her own morality, as if it is man-made. Yet all that the Church possesses—including her moral teaching—has been given to her as a gift from above. Its source is God Himself, Who is Himself “a priori.”

In Paglia’s view of how the Church’s teachings comes about, she must interact with society to adapt her morality according to the latest findings of (pseudo-)science and the latest cultural fads. It is not given to her by God, through both reason (natural law) and revelation. Thus, even the command “thou shalt not kill” is up for debate and discussion and “development.” Such a view upends all of Church teaching; it is no longer founded on a rock, but on sand.

Paglia goes on to state, “Between believers and non-believers there is a relationship of mutual learning.” When it comes to settled moral teachings, this is simply false. Catholics have nothing to learn from non-Catholics, for to suggest this is to suggest that Catholics should no longer learn from God Himself but instead from fallen man. Again, it is arrogance masquerading as humility. Of course, the great scandal here is that the anti-life, anti-Catholic Paglia is the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Every day he remains in office diminishes the moral authority of that academy as well as the moral authority of the pope who oversees it.