British Prime Minister Andy Burnham dealt the assisted suicide movement a major setback in his country this past week, and UK bishops rightly welcomed the development, but Church leaders need to realize that the fight is far from over.
They need to be ready for what is most definitely coming.
Last week, Burnham said he thinks British lawmakers ought to fix the country’s “broken” palliative care and social care programs before debating assisted suicide.
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“I think it is very challenging to introduce that wider debate in the context of people not receiving that care and having the peace of mind about that care. And that’s the way I kind of see this, and that’s the position I will stick to,” Burnham told Sky News.
His remark came during an exchange with reporters on the sidelines of a visit to a care home in London, and it took the wind out of efforts to move an assisted suicide bill through parliament.
Archbishop John Sherrington of Liverpool said it was “highly significant” that the prime minister gave his views.
“People who are dying are vulnerable and need compassionate care and spiritual accompaniment until their last breath,” he said.
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“We have consistently called for meaningful investment in palliative and end of life care as an appropriate focus to uphold the dignity of all at the end of life and opposed a bill seeking to legalize assisted suicide,” Sherrington said in a statement.
“This level of care can be found in many Catholic care homes and hospices, but the sector remains woefully underfunded and there is an existential threat to these places of compassion and care should this legislation be passed,” he added.
Bishop John Keenan of Paisley, who is President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, said the Prime Minister’s statement is an “opportunity to rethink the whole approach to assisted suicide.”
The Bill in the UK Parliament wouldn’t apply to Scotland, which has been covering the issue in their own Scottish Parliament.
“We were grateful that the Scottish Parliament resolutely rejected assisted suicide only recently,” Keenan said.
“We hope this latest intervention will encourage Members of the Westminster Parliament to reflect carefully before taking a step that would fundamentally change the way our society cares for the sick and vulnerable,” Keenan also said.
Burnham’s position is important for the bishops in Britain – the UK has more than one bishops’ conference – because he is the first professed Catholic to become Prime Minister in the United Kingdom.
(Tony Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving office, and Boris Johnson was baptized Catholic but became Anglican.)
Burnham’s predecessor in office had supported the 2024 bill, which eventually received a “free vote” – meaning MPs were not held to vote along party lines – and passed the Commons but died in the House of Lords in May of this year, after the Lords let time expire without voting.
The bill currently in the House of Commons is basically identical to another that died in the House of Lords last year. The new bill is slated for a vote in the Commons on September 11 of this year.
The 2024 version that failed in the Lords only passed the Commons by a slim majority, and time is short to address the host of outstanding issues various stakeholders have raised before the September 11 vote, so there is a chance this latest effort will fail.
If it does pass the Commons, the Lords may not be able stop it this time, not the same way, at least.
There’s a fight coming – in fact, it’s already joined – and the stakes are high for Britain, but they’re not limited to the UK.
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Burham has said he is “culturally Catholic” but no longer regularly attends Mass, and he had previously expressed support for the 2024 that eventually failed, so he is like a lot of Catholics in his country.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the circumstances of the Catholic Church are particular in England, where the Anglican Church is the State Church and Catholic bishops usually tiptoe around political issues.
It is possible they will want to move with caution and be positive towards the first Catholic leader.
Yet assisted suicide is something affecting Catholics around the world, and the general cultural attitudes found in various societies – especially throughout the West – also affect Catholics.
In Canada, which has one of the most active assisted suicide regimes, the views can be disturbing.
A recent government survey showed that most people support assisted suicide not because of “the loss of dignity” or fear of “severe pain,” but because they would be less able to engage in “enjoyable life activities.”
One of the reasons assisted suicide is opposed by British citizens with disabilities is that able-bodied people often look at them and think, “I would never want to live like that.”
In a powerful piece occasioned by recent successful legislative efforts to legalize assisted suicide in France and the U.S. state of New York, writer Amy Welborn called on the world’s bishops to do more than express concern and consternation.
“How much stronger it would be – and challenging,” she wrote on July 15, if bishops’ statements “ended with a confident call to actual resistance (emphasis in original).”
“That Catholic institutions will in no way participate in this regime, that you can be sure if you are in a Catholic hospital or care home that you will not have this ‘choice’ presented to you (emphasis in original). You will be safe,” Welborn wrote.
“And that Catholics will indeed personally resist this temptation – acknowledging that it is, indeed, a temptation in deeply difficult circumstances – and may not use assisted suicide for themselves or for any in their care,” Welborn also wrote.
“In short, to meet an unjust law, not with concern and reminders, but with a pastoral reminder to Catholics, an acknowledgment that this ‘choice’ will be a temptation – not just to ‘society’ or even to ‘the vulnerable’ – but to you – and here is the road to resisting that temptation and living out of actual, real, love and charity,” she wrote.
It is good the British Prime Minister has called for better palliative care and wants to delay the debate on assisted suicide.
The bishops need to prepare themselves for what happens after palliative care is declared to be offered properly, and politicians return to the business of allowing doctors to kill their patients.
Follow Charles Collins on X: @CharlesinRome