Are Catholics to “blame” for frustrating the campaign for assisted suicide? I certainly hope so. In his latest Spectator column, “What Catholics Get Wrong About Assisted Dying”, Matthew Parris certainly seems to think that “hypocritical Catholics” are behind all this fuss.
While this is hardly the full story, Parris is at least correct to concede that Catholic teaching is unusual in firmly condemning assisted suicide. Surely anyone with a cursory interest in the cumbersome progress of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, however, can see that its opponents are a broad and diverse coalition? Many who are neutral towards, or even favour, the concept of assisted suicide object to the particulars of this Bill, which has been rightly derided for rejecting hundreds of safeguards.
Parris is suspiciously incurious about why 350 British disability rights groups have expressed fierce opposition to the plans. These organisations sensibly worry that offering death as a remedy to “suffering” could quickly erect a whole range of pressures on many categories of people to end their lives, as it has in Canada and beyond. Experts on mental illness, poverty and domestic violence are similarly sceptical. Catholic teaching values the innate dignity and equality of all human life and promotes charity towards those in dire circumstances. We should be proud of this – but Catholics are not the only people to do so.
Parris accuses some Catholics of duplicitously “playing down” their “faith-based opposition” to the Bill, overlooking the obvious point that one may make both religious and secular arguments on any moral issue. Indeed, centuries of Catholic natural law tradition have upheld this distinction. It is not even true that the majority, or the loudest opponents of the Bill, are exclusively practising Catholics. Some of the most dogged and astute critics include the agnostic Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, the atheist Baroness Claire Fox and the 92-year-old Baroness Butler-Sloss, an Anglican who served as the inaugural female Lord Justice of Appeal.
Parris harangues Catholicism for “hypocrisy” because some Catholics may have violated Church teaching by opting for “euthanasia”. Yet unlike social progressivism, Catholicism admits that all humans – including its adherents – are sinners who fall short. Moral progressives like Parris admit no such fault, and thus their view of life-and-death decisions is similarly flawed.
Equally arrogant is his vague assertion that “public opinion” backs the Bill, ignoring the sad fact that many people assume that the euphemistic term “assisted dying” refers to a form of palliative care. The public – Catholic, irreligious and everything in between – are aghast at the aggressive attempts to push through this particular Bill, especially when confidence in our state health service has plummeted to record lows. Moreover, concerns that people could be pushed into assisted suicide to save NHS money are understandably repulsive.
Fresh polling from More in Common, formerly chaired by the Bill’s co-sponsor Kim Leadbeater, included leading questions in favour of the Bill, but still found that over half of respondents disagreed with bypassing the House of Lords – an unprecedented tactic for a non-government Bill.
Parris patronisingly suggests Catholics and others opposed to assisted suicide should simply “catch up” with the times, as did our laws regarding abortion, in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and homosexuality. This carelessly lumps together all these issues as if they were precisely the same legal question, and pressures Catholics to conform to the world when we are called to do precisely the opposite. He demotes a sophisticated, ancient dialogue on the human person to curtain-twitching reactionism.
It is telling that Parris specifically singles out Catholics for ire. Now, before you start, some of my best friends are anti-Catholics, and often it makes sense to take their insults as compliments. We Catholics ought to be proud that our teaching on such matters refuses to “change with the times”, as the truth never can. The late columnist Charles Krauthammer, a non-practising Jew, praised the Church for precisely this. Krauthammer told Fox News that people would “thank the Church for holding up” on its pro-life message “despite the ridicule and the mockery and the attacks it suffered”.
The Spectator’s dedication to lively discourse is also worthy of praise, especially Parris’s recent column, which usefully revealed just how desperate some of our detractors have become.
