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Euthanasia advocates use deception to affect public’s perception of assisted suicide

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

Politicians claim that moral opposition to assisted suicide (or suicide in general) and euthanasia is religiously motivated and then make the leap to insisting that this means such opposition should be ignored.

Euthanasia activists are currently doing what they do best: the bait and switch. 

As the debate heats up in the U.K., all of the familiar tactics are on display. First, of course, there is the relentless lying. Despite the case study of Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium – and despite disability activists, judges, palliative physicians, and the secretaries of health and justice warning that no “safeguards” will hold – U.K. euthanasia activists are insisting that this time everything will be different. 

The response to these critiques has been predictable but infuriating. Euthanasia activists insist that all of this is about religion – that those nasty Christians are, once again, seeking to impose their suffering-based theology on the country. (This despite the fact that even Ann Furedi, who heads up the U.K.’s second largest abortion provider, opposes the proposed assisted suicide law.) One good microcosmic example of this tactic comes from UK writer Julie Street, who posted to X (formerly Twitter): 

Just walked out of Mass bloody fuming – our priest used the homily to read a letter from the Catholic bishops telling people to oppose the Assisted Dying Bill then handed out cards with our local MP’s details on to lobby them. Religion has no place in politics or women’s rights. 

There is much to say in response, of course. Why is Street so surprised to discover that her Catholic priest and bishops are, in fact, Catholic? Is she ignorant of the religion that she at least appears to practice? How airtight does one’s mind have to be not to see assisted suicide and euthanasia as religious issues? Indeed, “euthanasia” is Greek for “good death” – the theological premises are baked right into the term. Or does Street think that religious people should shut their mouths in the political arena and voluntarily disenfranchise themselves as the fates of the weak are decided? 

Is Street also ignorant of the fact that it was largely due to the Catholic Church’s public opposition that Adolf Hitler moved the Nazi’s euthanasia operation underground? (We now know, of course, that the Nazis only claimed to have disbanded the T-4 program.) I thought progressives wanted a Church that stood up for the weak, vulnerable, and dispossessed – and who qualifies more than the sick, elderly, and those with disabilities? Christians are accused of not being loving enough, and then rebuked when they stand up for the victims the political class deems expendable – first the unborn, now those on the other end of life’s spectrum.  

But there’s more to this tactic than grating ignorance. Progressives like to play both sides of the fence. Take abortion, for example. Politicians like to claim that it is a religious issue, and that thus they cannot legislate against it due to the fact that we live in pluralistic societies. Many religious leaders are quite happy to follow this logic, claiming that since abortion is a political issue, it cannot be discussed in church. And all the while, the countless corpses of the aborted unborn pile up in the No Man’s Land between. 

The assisted suicide debate is unfolding along similar lines. Politicians claim that moral opposition to assisted suicide (or suicide in general) and euthanasia is religiously motivated and then make the leap to insisting that this means such opposition should be ignored. Meanwhile, because politicians are debating the issue, folks like Street can claim that because this is now a political issue, priests and pastors should keep their traps shut. See what they did there? It’s a neat trick, and despite how farcical and illogical it is, it seems to work with maddening regularity. 

In fact, the priest Julie Street had the good fortune to hear was standing in the tradition of the clergy who stood up against Adolf Hitler and his eugenicist gang – and fighting the same evil being advanced under many of the same premises, to boot. She should be grateful. If she can’t manage that, she should at least be better educated.   

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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JD Vance was one of the last people to meet Pope Francis

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From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

Vice President JD Vance was one of the last people to meet Pope Francis, as he saw him yesterday on Easter. Francis met with Vance, before he traveled to St. Peter’s Square to give a blessing to thousands gathered for Easter.

The pope died this morning at 7:35 this morning in Rome.

Vance, a Catholic convert, said his “heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him.”

“I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill,” Vance wrote on X. “But I’ll always remember him for the below homily he gave in the very early days of COVID. It was really quite beautiful.”

“May God rest his soul,” Vance wrote.

Vance linked to a March 27, 2020 homily titled “Extraordinary Moment of Prayer.”

Pope Francis said:

Embracing His cross means finding the courage to embrace all the hardships of the present time, abandoning for a moment our eagerness for power and possessions in order to make room for the creativity that only the Spirit is capable of inspiring. It means finding the courage to create spaces where everyone can recognize that they are called, and to allow new forms of hospitality, fraternity and solidarity. By his cross we have been saved in order to embrace hope and let it strengthen and sustain all measures and all possible avenues for helping us protect ourselves and others. Embracing the Lord in order to embrace hope: that is the strength of faith, which frees us from fear and gives us hope.

Vance was in Italy this week, as he also met with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. He also attended a Good Friday liturgy at the Vatican, as reported by the Associated Press. However, it remained unclear if the vice president would meet with the Pope, although he had a scheduled meeting with Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

In February, Pope Francis appeared to directly address Vance’s citation of “ordo amoris” where the vice president argued that the country must first take care of its own citizens before refugees and illegal immigrants.

Earlier this year Pope Francis issued a blistering letter, appearing as a direct rebuff to both President Donald Trump’s policies to tackle illegal immigration and JD Vance’s comments about the “ordo amoris.”

Francis took direct aim at Vance about the “ordo amoris” – the Catholic teaching on a hierarchy or order of charity which starts with God, the family, and spreads eventually to the wider world – a principle defended and outlined by the Greek philosophers and Catholic theologians such as Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

Repeatedly referring to the “infinite dignity” of man, Francis appeared to suggest that, based on this dignity, all people should be loved to the same degree and in the same way, thus defending his principle that the same dignity should be the principle behind having widely permissive immigration policies.

As extensively reported by LifeSiteNews, the pope’s health has been in decline for several months now since he was first admitted to the hospital in February for bronchitis, which turned out to actually be double pneumonia. A full obituary by LifeSiteNews’ Senior Vatican Correspondent Michael Haynes can be read here.

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Pope Francis Dies on Day after Easter

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By John Leake

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was many “firsts” in papal history.

This morning in Rome, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Vatican camerlengo (office for announcing Pope’s death) declared from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta, where Francis lived:

At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of His Church.

Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which made him the first pope from Latin America. He was also the first pope from the Jesuit order, which was banned in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV (and restored by Pope Pius VII in 1814).

Pope Francis was also the first to take the name of Francis of Assisi —the Italian mystic, poet and Catholic friar who founded the religious order of the Franciscans. Saint Francis has long been celebrated for his humility, simplicity, and his dedication to ministering to the poor. Pope Francis is said to have been especially inspired by Saint Francis.

The New York Times just published what strikes me as a competently written account of some key aspects of his papacy.

Francis was elected in March 2013 after the resignation of Benedict, the first pontiff to step down in nearly six centuries, amid turmoil and intrigue about secret lobbies and financial chicanery. The cardinal electors sought a reformer with a strong administrative hand, but few anticipated how Francis, then the 76-year-old archbishop of Buenos Aires, would blend reformist zeal and folksy charm in a push to clean house and transform the church.

“Buona sera,” good evening, Francis announced to the faithful in his first remarks as pope from the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square, breaking the ice with unaffected style. He joked about being from Argentina, noting that in fulfilling their duty to produce a pope, “it seems that my brother cardinals have gone almost to the ends of the Earth to get him.” …

Francis signaled his humble style from the outset. He paid his own bill at the Vatican hotel where he stayed during the conclave that elected him, rode about town in a modest Ford Focus, lived in a Vatican guesthouse rather than the ornate papal apartments and, in a Holy Week ritual performed at a youth prison, washed the feet of a young Muslim woman. Later, in his ailing years, he referred to his own frailty in demanding dignity for the aged.

His humility could be disarming. When asked about a priest who was said to be gay, he responded, “Who am I to judge?”

“Who am I to judge?” This statement seemed to recall Jesus’s statement to the Pharisees when they brought before him a woman condemned to be stoned for adultery. When they asked him if she should be stoned in accordance with the Law of Moses, he replied, “If any one of you is without sin, let him throw the first stone.”

Setting aside Paul’s explicit condemnation of homosexuality in Romans 1:26-27, the trouble with Francis’s statement is, it seems to me, twofold. First is the fact that Roman Catholic priests take a vow of celibacy—that is, they explicitly renounce sexuality.

Secondly, the Pope’s statement was remarkably tone-deaf to scandals that have rocked the Catholic church in recent decades involving gay priests who have abused minors in their congregations.

In 2018, Francis initially ignored Chilean abuse victims when he appointed Juan Barros Madrid to head the diocese of Osorno in Chile. Barros had been mentored by a notorious abuser named Father Fernando Karadima.

I mention the controversial matter of sexuality not in an attempt to adjudicate it, but to point out the broader controversy of Francis’s papacy—namely, his conspicuous embrace of many elements in the globalist agenda, including his advocacy of mass illegal immigration and what may be characterized as the Climate Change Cult.

In 2016, Francis seemed to throw his prestige behind the globalist propaganda campaign to prevent Donald Trump from being elected president. On February 18, 2016, he stated:

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel.

Seeing this reminded me of the walls around Vatican City. Pope Leo IV commissioned their construction in 846 in response to Saracen attacks that caused significant damage to the St. Peter’s Basilica.

We believe the most disturbing gesture of his papacy was Vatican City’s issuance of a 20 Euro silver coin in 2022. As the Numista catalogue describes it:

The coin depicts a doctor, a nurse and a young person who is ready to receive the vaccine. The Holy Father has repeatedly stressed the importance of vaccination, recalling that healthcare is “a moral obligation”, and it is important to “continue efforts to immunize even the poorest peoples.

Note that the formulation “a young person who is ready to receive the vaccine” is identical to the formulation for a communicant “who is ready to receive the host”—in Italian “pronto a ricevere l’Eucaristia.”

The obverse of the coin bears the name Franciscus, the year 2022 (“Anno MMXXII”) and the Coat of Arms of Pope Francis.

I have no doubt that Francis performed many acts of Christian love and charity during his long life, and I hope he will rest in peace.

 

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