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Too much page one publicity was given several years ago to the case of a doctor in New Hampshire who deliberately used a treatment that could cause, if it did not actually cause, the death of a patient. The incident gave promoters of so-called painless killing a lot of free propaganda.
On the other hand the story set all of us thinking. For one thing the event made us realize that there are many so-called healers of men's bodies, and unfortunately a large number of so-called healers of men's souls, rudderless preachers of the Gospel, who favor putting innocent people to death.
They call this form of murder mercy-killing, which means the administration of an easy, painless death to one who is suffering from an incurable and often agonizing ailment. Mercy-killing is also called euthanasia, which means easy and painless death.
Let us sweep aside the screen of sickly sentimentality which surrounds the subject. Then we can get down to sound reasoning. Mercy-killing stands condemned on several counts, some of which are moral, some of which are material or physical. We mention both because often people who propose or favor this method of helping the diseased are influenced only by arguments rooted in the material.
1. Mercy-killing is outright murder on the part of the one who administers the drug or other means that will bring about death.
2. Mercy-killing is suicide on the part of the patient who requests or consents to any means of shortening life or destroying life.
3. God and God alone has the direct right to dispose of human life. The Almighty has definitely condemned murder and suicide. In mercy killing, a doctor or a group of doctors, the patient or his relatives, take to themselves this right of God. Here is the fundamental reason that euthanasia is wrong from the moral standpoint.
4. Mercy-killing not only fails to take into account man's supernatural life; it denies it. It disregards the value of pain and suffering; it rejects all idea of merit gained by suffering; it ignores entirely the word of Christ:
"If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." St. Luke, 9:23.5. Mercy-killing helps no one and solves no problems. Rather it creates problems, a problem for the patient who is seriously sick. He will be in mortal fear that the doctor will shorten his life. It creates a problem for the doctor who has a conscience - he will be unwilling to grant the request of the patient or the relatives, should they desire euthanasia. It creates a problem for society and especially for our courts in the form of expensive, tax-paid prosecutions and investigations.
6. The practice of killing off the incurable, the insane, the crippled, and the defective, stands condemned by the science of medicine. Here is a telling point in any argument with the material-minded proponents of putting people to death. Who is to say that a disease is incurable? Within the last few generations medical science has made enormous strides forward in curing disease. Thousands upon thousands lie dead in our cemeteries from diseases which since their death have found a cure and a remedy. Kill off the so-called incurable, the so-called fatally diseased, the so-called criminally insane, and the research doctors, the explorers and discoverers in medical science will have no subjects to work with, no basis, no specimens for their observations and examination.
7. The public approval and practice of mercy-killing will gradually and eventually lead us into the horrible slaughter of the sickly and insane that shocked the world when we heard how it was carried on in Nazi concentration camps. Practically the same methods are stili carried on behind the Iron Curtain.
8. Life would become cheapened even more and civilization would be pushed back even farther to pagan times when undesirables were exposed to die, to the pagan practices of some in China and Aftica today who leave unwanted children to be devoured by wild beasts or to perish by starvation.
A few moments' reasoning proves that mercy-killing is against God's law and against nature's law. It is immoral and unscientific. I would also like to point out that it is un-American.
As a nation we believe in God [or at least, we used to]. We believe that all our blessings have come from the Creator. We repeat with conviction the words of our Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are the right to LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."The right to LIFE was given by God and can be taken away directly only by God.
In the New Hampshire case we do not know whether or not the patient asked the doctor to end her suffering. But our euthanasia societies pound that point - if the patient insists, the physician must administer the killing drug. Do they realize that a person wracked with pain is in no position to think clearly? He wants relief from pain at any price. He needs to be protected from himself.
You will encounter people who lean a little, or even strongly, to this pagan practice. A large number of doctors and even a group of clergy commended the murder. That proves we have all too many ministers who are miles from their moral moorings, and that we have too many doctors who are traitors to their Hippocratic Oath, namely:
"I solemnly swear that I will treat the sick only with a view to helping them and never in order to inflict injury. I will not give anyone a deadly poison, even if requested to do so, nor will I suggest such a way of acting."Yes, it's murder - only with different names.
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Adapted from Occasional Talks, Volume 2
by Fr. Arthur Tonne, OFM (©1954)
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