The Church of England is opposed to any change in the law, or medical practice, to make assisted suicide permissible or acceptable.
Suffering, the Church maintains, must be met with compassion, commitment to high-quality services and effective medication; meeting it by assisted suicide is merely removing it in the crudest way possible.
In its March 2009 paper Assisted Dying/Suicide and Voluntary Euthanasia, the Church acknowledges the complexity of the issues: the compassion that motivates those who seek change equally motivates the Church’s opposition to change.
There was an attempt to bring in assisted suicide via legislation initiated in the House of Lords. Yes, North American readers may boggle at this quaint institution, but it has often stood for sanity in the face of the fashion of the moment. Be that as it may, the attempt to bring in assisted suicide was defeated. A coalition of Christians, Jews and Palliative Care Specialists, among others, worked to defeat it. I sometimes read criticism of Rowan Williams on this site. Readers might be interested to know that he and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor went in to the most important mainline news magazine (8 am) to be interviewed together and speak jointly against it. God bless them. The religious leaders faced a terrible backlash from journalists after the vote was lost in the House of Lords. Now, of course, we find law being changed by the back door. What a comment on our country.
I should have made it clear: the news magazine referred to was a BBC Radio Four morning program called The Today Programme, with an enormous listenership.
Terry Tee, I am glad to hear of the Archbishop’s and the Cardinal’s joint appearance on the BBC to defend Christian principles. Thank you for letting us know.