Asked by The Earl of Glasgow
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to legislate to provide terminally ill patients with the legal right to decide when, where and how they should die, if necessary with the assistance of others….
The Lord Bishop of Derby: My Lords, two quotations. John Donne:
“No man is an island”.
and the Book of Job:
“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away”.
Life is a gift. None of us decided to be born; we came from a relationship between two people, from a culture, from a context, from a spiritual hinterland, and any life is part of that flow. As it flows on, it seeks for more and more. Modern economics, and the market, encourage us to see ourselves as autonomous individuals. The noble Earl just talked about making an individual choice. None of us is an individual in that sense: we are part of a web of relationships, and that web holds us in suffering as well as in the imminence of death. T. S. Eliot said, “In our endings are our beginnings”….
Read it all (the question begins at “2 p.m.” on the lefthand margin in boldface.
Bishop Redfern argues in the recent H. of Lords Debate on Assisted Dying Legislation
Asked by The Earl of Glasgow
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to legislate to provide terminally ill patients with the legal right to decide when, where and how they should die, if necessary with the assistance of others….
The Lord Bishop of Derby: My Lords, two quotations. John Donne:
“No man is an island”.
and the Book of Job:
“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away”.
Life is a gift. None of us decided to be born; we came from a relationship between two people, from a culture, from a context, from a spiritual hinterland, and any life is part of that flow. As it flows on, it seeks for more and more. Modern economics, and the market, encourage us to see ourselves as autonomous individuals. The noble Earl just talked about making an individual choice. None of us is an individual in that sense: we are part of a web of relationships, and that web holds us in suffering as well as in the imminence of death. T. S. Eliot said, “In our endings are our beginnings”….
Read it all (the question begins at “2 p.m.” on the lefthand margin in boldface.