Vatican official calls assisted suicide of U.S. woman "reprehensible"

[Warren Stupidity]

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican's top bioethics official calls "reprehensible" the suicide of an American woman suffering terminal brain cancer who stated she wanted to die with dignity.

Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, told the ANSA news agency on Tuesday that "dignity is something other than putting an end to one's own life."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/brittany-maynards-assisted-suicide-condemned-by-vatican-official/

Hey Vatican, stay classy, how's about minding your own goddamn business and stop with the suffocating moralizing about stuff that has nothing to do with your voodoo nonsense.

[Bragi]

1. I question that this was "suicide"

As she explained, she had no suicidal tendencies, or really even wanted to end her life. It was her body that dictated her need for an accelerated and humane death. We need better language to distinguish between what she did, and "suicide" as we know it.

And oh, yes, the Vatican statement is appalling.

[skepticscott]

2. As so many Really Wise People

on this board have said "who the hell cares"? As we've been reminded many times, nothing the Catholic Church says or does affects you if you're not a "practicing Catholic".

So why should it matter if people believe this shit or not? Why should it matter if people here support, defend and are apologists for religion and the suppression of human freedom that it advocates? Why should progressives care at all about this stuff when we can "build bridges" and "form coalitions" instead?

[Cartoonist]

8. I care

nothing the Catholic Church says or does affects you if you're not a "practicing Catholic"
-
Not true. Their influence impacts laws and freedoms. Their constituents vote and exerts pressure on governing bodies. Assisted suicide or whatever you want to call it is subject to law. I feel that it should be, otherwise heirs would kill their parents under the flimsiest of excuses. The problem I have with the church is that their objections are faith based, in other words, completely irrelevant.

[skepticscott]

9. I should have listened to the voice

telling me "Yeah, dude..you DO need the sarcasm icon..really!"

[Cartoonist]

10. In other circumstances

No sarcasm tag is needed

[djean111]

3. Is that a Thing - dying in pain for The Lord?

Somehow "the Vatican" and "bioethics" don't quite go together.

[trotsky]

12. Yes, that's a thing.

It seems to be particularly Catholic thing, as a matter of fact. One of the fiercest criticisms leveled at "Mother" Teresa was that she withheld pain medication from people at her clinics - because she, like many Catholics, believed that suffering brings one closer to Jesus and the pain and suffering he endured.

[djean111]

13. An Indian contractor I worked with said that if one was poor and sick in India, seeing Mother Teresa

was a sure sign you were going to die. No doctor, no hospital, no medicine. But when she got sick - finest health care. He thought it was funny how Westerners revered her as helping the poor in India.
Looks like I will have to be VERY choosy about who is around me if I get terminally ill.

[Warren Stupidity]

14. You want the hospice nurses.

Last edited Tue Nov 4, 2014, 04:44 PM - Edit history (1)

They are over-seeing my mom's end of life care, and their one concern is that she not be in physical or mental pain. Just make sure they are -not- religiously affiliated.

[silverweb]

15. Absolutely.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]When I was young, they called it "sharing in the suffering of Jesus" and said it was a very great privilege.

Also, passively submitting to the indignities of terminal care was "giving others the opportunity to reach for holiness" (or something very similar to that) by providing such care.

Haven't kept in touch since I walked away from the childhood devotion/brainwashing decades ago, so I'm not sure what they're calling terminal suffering now. Probably something not much different.

[Humanist_Activist]

19. Its called Redemptive Suffering, one of the many beliefs within Christianity that is outright...

awful and evil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redemptive_suffering

[rug]

4. Ignoring your posturing and blather about voodo nonsense, there are two statements here.

He cautioned that he was not judging individuals "but the gesture in and of itself should be condemned."

"I think until anyone has walked a mile in my shoes and knows what they're facing and has felt the -- like, just bone-splitting headaches that I get sometimes, or the seizures, or the inability to speak, or the moments where I'm looking at my husband's face and I can't think of his name."

This person and this issue warrant a lot more than your usual internet chest-thumping.

[atreides1]

5. Really?

I'm not an official, but I know that the assistance of the Vatican to child molesting priests for decades, is unforgivable!

[Kelvin Mace]

6. Apparently, dying with dignity

means dying in agony, with no control of your bodily functions, and completely oblivious to your friends and family.

This explains so much about the Catholic Church.

[trotsky]

7. Hey, Vatican!

You have no right to control other people's decisions, as much as you wish you did. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

[mr blur]

11. "dignity is something other than putting an end to one's own life."

Yeah, and it's something other than following the bigoted, immoral dictates of a child-molesting, sexually-repressed, emotionally-stunted death cult, too.

[Dorian Gray]

16. I absolutely

100% do not support his statements, and I absolutely 100% support her decision to end her life as she did.

Having said that, sometimes it bothered me the insistence that people be allowed to die with dignity. I think she did die with dignity, but I think that people who choose to suffer until their last breath also die with dignity. It's all dignified. I understand why both choices may be made, and I believe that choice should be possible in all of our states.

Brittany was brave in her fight. And she did die with dignity. But I don't think suffering negates dignity.

[trotsky]

18. I believe the phrase "die with dignity" means to die under the terms of one's choosing.

So it varies according to the choice of the individual, which is all that Brittany argued for. WE get to choose for ourselves. Not a church or a priest.

[Dorian Gray]

22. I have no problem

with this at all. I don't think anyone should determine these things for us. I always thought Brittany was very brave.

[AtheistCrusader]

21. I agree, if that is what people choose. The 'Death With Dignity' moniker was selected in a

knock-down drag-out political fight with, primarily, this church. There are other groups that oppose it, but not with the money, the votes, or the activism that you see from this specific church every time this issue comes up.

So something harder for them to mock, belittle, and shit all over, than 'Physician Assisted Suicide' was selected for PR purposes. Because the RCC has to be fucking children about it.

[theHandpuppet]

17. Oh, just for this once....

Shut the hell up!

[AtheistCrusader]

20. Fuck the pope, fuck the vatican, and fuck all the inhabitants thereof.

If the Roman Catholic Church wants to see something truly reprehensible, it's gonna have to pluck that beam out of its own eye before it looks in the fucking mirror.

This isn't just an opinion by some comfortable, well fed, sanctimonious piece of shit on the other side of the planet, safely ignored. No. This is a sanctimonious piece of shit on the other side of the planet that is a member of a tax free org that politically lobbies to DENY NON MEMBERS this right, this most basic of human rights.

A member of an org that lies to people about the issue, because the sin of lying is somehow less important than an option the terminally ill take, in dire circumstances.

Fuck. The. Roman. Catholic. Church.

If I could snap my fingers and launch it into the sun, I wouldn't hesitate.

[rug]

23. Feel better now?

[AtheistCrusader]

30. Not by a long shot.

[rug]

31. A tall shot might be the ticket.

[AtheistCrusader]

32. I'm glad this is funny to you. Not surprised. Just glad.

[rug]

33. It isn't. You are.

[AtheistCrusader]

34. Let me know when you're ready to talk about a church that promulgates the idea that

physician assisted suicide for the terminally ill who CHOOSE it as an option, are 'reprehensible'.

Because she CHOSE that option.

De Paula is much more the savage than the people/decisions he criticizes.

[mr blur]

25. Yeah, but what do you really think, AC?

Remember, Blank Frank is changing everything now. It's peace and tolerance and understanding and rainbows for everyone!

[trotsky]

26. SEISMIC SHIFT!!! n/t

[Iggo]

27. Vatican can fuck right the fuck off.

:middlefinger:

[Trillo]

28. The Vatican is probably invested in health care and pharmaceuticals.

https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=vatican+investments&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#channel=fs&q=vatican+investments+health+care

Seems to be true per that search.

[hrmjustin]

29. I have a hard time considering what she did a suicide.

It is but I can't see it as a sin or imo that the God I believe in would be upset by it.

I think people should have this right if they are terminally ill to end the their life in a dignified way with the help of a doctor's perscription.