Friday, April 08, 2005

Archbishop Burke on the Evil of Euthanasia

On March 31, Terri Schindler Schiavo died from the lack of nutrition and hydration. For her parents, her brother and her sister, Terri’s death was particularly sorrowful, for they were constrained by the courts of our nation to see their daughter and sister die for lack of the food and water which they so much desired to provide for her in their loving care.

The day of Terri Schiavo’s death was most sad for our whole nation. The United States of America, with its great abundance of material goods, would not provide basic food and water to a citizen whose life was heavily burdened but, rather, let her die of hunger and thirst because the "quality" of her life was judged not to merit the protection of the law.
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The natural moral law teaches us the inviolability of innocent human life. Deliberately taking the life of an innocent person is intrinsically evil and is never justified.
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What about the so-called "right to die"? No one of us has a right to die, in the sense of a right to cause one’s own death. We have a right to those material and spiritual helps which will prepare us for death, when God calls us home to Himself. Therefore, even if a person will have expressed the desire to die under certain circumstances, his desire can be respected only to the degree that his desire is true to God’s Law.
Complete article is here - a MUST-READ!

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