Sydney Archbishop stresses Church must ‘offer positive alternatives' to euthanasia
By Kielce Gussie
“Pandora’s box”, as the Bishop of Darwin, Charles Gauci, described voluntary assisted dying in 2024, is being thrown open in Australia.
Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory of the country, which is expected to legalize the practice of assisted dying within the next few weeks. If that happens, voluntary assisted dying (VAD) will be legal in every state and every territory of Australia.
Just last week on July 24, the Labor Party—the current ruling party—voted to support removing federal barriers to tele-consultations for approving euthanasia and amended its constitution to allow Members of Parliament a conscience vote on future voluntary assisted dying legislation.
While nothing has yet been determined by this vote, the debate of more accessible assisted dying throughout the country is very much on the table in Australia today.
One more step
Speaking to Vatican News, Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney explained that this vote signalled a change to the Labor Party’s platform. “There are very many things in the Labor Party's platform that the party has never moved to bring into law in Australia,” he stressed. “And interestingly, with this one, the Prime Minister has said publicly that he does not support it.”
Yet, this vote applies more pressure on expanding the availability and ways of carrying out euthanasia in Australia.
The timeline of legalizing voluntary assisted dying in the country has been relatively quick. Its first law was passed in 2017 in Victoria, which then came into effect in 2019. From there, Western Australia, Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland, and New South Wales followed between 2019 and 2021.
After a federal ban was repealed in 2022, the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) legalized VAD.
“How quickly we went in this country from having no euthanasia legal at all to now more than 14,000 people have applied for it, more than 7,000 have died from it,” Archbishop Fisher lamented.
Voting to allow tele-consultations regarding VAD comes in the context of many other moves pushing for euthanasia to be even more common in the country. As a result, he pointed out how “very quickly, there are pushes then to remove all the so-called safeguards one by one.”
A global debate
Australia is not the only country making VAD legal and more accessible. France became the 14th country to allow assisted dying after years of debate on July 15, but under strict conditions. Thirteen states in the United States have legalized the practice. Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942.
With the growing acceptance and legalization of VAD around the world, the Archbishop of Sydney argued that the Catholic Church in the countries with experience with VAD can help educate the newer nations.
This would help “make the case for being reverent and safeguarding human life”, as the Sydney Archbishop explained. The new push for “telehealth, so-called, which is really tele-death,” means simply having consultations over the phone or internet. Archbishop Fisher argued this removes very important steps in discerning the needs of a patient.
He argued telehealth means allowing people to access euthansia "without any serious consultation with a doctor, without any doctor having ever met them or talked through with them what care they really need, what their present needs for palliative care might be or for other kinds of medical treatment.”
Pro-life alternatives
In light of this ongoing debate, the Catholic Church maintains its stance on euthanasia or VAD as “gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator” (CCC 2324).
Here, Archbishop Fisher stressed the local Church’s duty in places facing the legalization of VAD. “We as a Church have to offer people positive alternatives,” he noted. If people are given better palliative care, if they are shown love and attention, if the options are walked through with them, and if they learn of other ways to deal with suffering, they might not feel VAD is the only option.
“But if they are not offered other options, then a lot of people are frightened of losing control, frightened of being in a lot of pain, frightened of being a burden on others,” the Archbishop explained.
That is where the Church must step in. “We are by far the biggest providers of alternatives to euthanasia, of palliative care for people towards the end of life, of good pastoral care, respite care for the families who are caring for the dying and the elderly,” he said.
Moreover, the Catholic community in Australia has been lobbying for having the right to opt out of euthanasia in Catholic healthcare and aged care institutions and for Catholic healthcare professionals.
While some parts of the country have protection, others do not or have very little. The Catholic community, however, will continue to fight to offer patients, families, and individuals the option for life—stressing their inherent human dignity and right to life from conception to natural death.
Thank you for reading our article. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to our daily newsletter. Just click here.
