The rest at LifeSiteAlthough framed as compassion, determining end-of-life procedures by evaluating “quality of life” merely discourages vulnerable persons, making them more likely to submit to a hastened death, according to the Catholic bishop of Madison.
“When we start evaluating the quality of somebody else’s life, that means we’re asking them to pull up the hearse. Get the hearse ready,” said Bishop Robert Morlino at a bioethics conference at Christendom College this month.
“So often people want to die because as they see what’s going on around them they see everybody as rather anxious for the hearse, and they figure maybe I’d better get out of everybody’s way.
“If every human person has irreducible, unrepeatable human dignity, then no human life could ever be a burden.”
The Wisconsin bishop criticized the premise, championed by the “right to die” movement, that assisted suicide represents a victory for personal autonomy.
“Why do they feel like a burden? Everyone is telling them how wonderful they are and how precious they are, but that’s not the action ... the sick person might hear somebody whisper, ‘What’s the number of that funeral director? - You are so precious!’ Those kinds of things happen,” he said.
Photo