Putting Tools in the Hands of Priests
The great feast of Easter always means that we celebrate the true victory of good over evil, of life over death, of Christ over the forces of darkness. This signal victory is one that we necessarily celebrate not just on one day, but on the many days following Easter and indeed throughout the entire year and each time we celebrate the Eucharist. It is essential to remember that this victory is such that even in the face of defeats and darkness that we can be able to hold fast to the truth which allow us to sustain our hearts or minds and to reshape our lives as we necessarily must. We know how difficult it is fighting for the principles of life. You may be downhearted or feel that we are losing completely because each time we lose a battle it means that we lose a life.
The early Christians must sometimes have felt the same. So, their hearts were lifted when they saw the Risen Lord. And they got to work.
It is in this spirit that Priests For Life Canada is bringing out a primer (or handbook) for the assistance of clergy when confronting Medical Assistance in Dying. This primer hopes to build on the good work that was done 10 years ago by the Bishops of Alberta and the Northwest Territories. So many things have changed in the last 10 years since the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide and we are responding to numerous requests we have received from across Canada. It is our aim to collaborate with other organizations to publish a primer to deal with practical situations.
What happens when a person comes to us wanting to be killed by their doctors? How can the circumstances be changed? What do we do if the time between the request and the killing is short? What circumstances must be taken into consideration as to a person being killed at home, in hospital, palliative care, or hospice? Can people broadly receive the Sacraments of Reconciliation, the Eucharist, or the Sacrament of the Sick if they have a wavering or if they have a firm resolve to go through with this suicide and killing? How do we deal with accompaniment of those who are resolute in their resolve? How do we deal with those who are wavering in their resolve? What about the mentally ill, the socially marginalized, or weak?
These are extremely sensitive pastoral issues and they must be dealt with in a practical way. Using this primer, we hope to give practical assistance to you, the priests who are in this field and trying to deal with this, to bring the light of Christ into this dark area of our lives. It is a call to act, to be strong, and to teach unceasingly and unwaveringly. We hope that this new aid, this primer will assist you in this essential work. We rely as well on the experiences and the hard-won knowledge of clergy from across this country and from researchers. We look forward to sharing this with you over the next several months to get it quickly and efficiently into the hands of every single priest in our country. For those of you who are supporters, we are unsure yet of the cost, but we will as always rely on you to be able to help us to help the clergy to be able to defend life. The Easter story is one of victory. It is also one of both certainty and the challenging work necessary to achieve it in our time.
Fr. Tom Lynch (PFLC National President)