Cardinal rebukes officials of pontifical academy who backed assisted suicide
February 22, 2022
» Continue to this story on National Catholic Register
CWN Editor's Note: Cardinal Willem Eijk of Utrecht has firmly rejected the arguments—advanced by two members of the Pontifical Academy for Life—that Catholics could support a proposal to accept assisted suicide in Italy, as a tactical move to block a more radical bid for the legalization of voluntary euthanasia.
Cardinal Eijk—who is a trained physician, and himself a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life—told the National Catholic Register that ““legalizing medically assisted suicide automatically paves the way for legalizing euthanasia as the next logical step, for no significant moral difference exists between medically assisted suicide and euthanasia.”
Father Carlo Casalone, SJ, had published an essay in the Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica arguing for support of an “imperfect law” to forestall a worse alternative. Marie-Jo Thiel, a fellow member of the Pontifical Academy, backed that argument, suggesting that the Church’s stand is evolving. Civilta Cattolica carries significant weight, because its contents are cleared before publication by the Vatican Secretariat of State.
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