In an article about Canon Professor Robin Gill, a leading Church of England theologian, and his support for not prosecuting those who participate in euthanasia ends with this.
"Anglicans are not united on whether we should legalise euthanasia," Gill contended to the London Observer. "The bishops have consistently shown they don’t believe in changing the law, but the majority of churchgoers think it should be amended."
This attitude is not particular to only the Church of England but is an attitude that seems to affect may religious believers. That morality is seen as a law that can be changed and amended based on a majority opinion. This is the very opposite of the development of doctrine and is in fact a denial of doctrine. This Democratization of religious believers manages to give everybody the vote except the Holy Spirit. That believers must have knocked there head against something and developed a case of historical amnesia.
The argument Professor Robin Gill makes is the familiar one. That relieving suffering through euthanasia is in fact a compassionate act or an act of mercy. This attitude is understandable from a secular point of view, though from a Christian point of view it totally forgets the mystery of suffering and that our suffering can be united with the passion of Christ. Passion from the Latin originally meant physical suffering. The word compassion means to suffer with. Euthanasia violates the dignity of the human person. The article always joins the words euthanasia with voluntary as if the persons acquiesce to their murder makes the act moral. I wonder if they would argue that the beating of a massochist is also a moral act for both those involved? The Catechism states:
2277 Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.
Thus 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. 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.
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It isn’t surprising that Anglican bishops don’t believe in changing the law. If they’d had the moxie to resist the tyranny of the State, the original Anglican bishops would have joined their brother John Fisher in martyrdom. Or perhaps even Henry VIII might have choked at the prospect of explaining to the rest of Europe how he came to murder all of his bishops, and he’d have waited until poor Catherine died before marrying his chick.