THE outstanding moral issue that the Roman Catholic Church has not addressed is not homosexuality, but life and death. The Church was established by Christ to end death’s dominion, as He had conquered it in His resurrection. Yet, the Church will not let us end an aspect of death’s dominion by ourselves, one that has to do with the timing of that event. Death ends death’s dominion; all fear of it vanishes, anxiety is eased and not a care in the world is left. Grace will give us everlasting life, but we should be able to decide when to end and start another all over again.
In the past the Church outright condemned, with imprecations, the moral question of taking control of your own life, at least at the point of death. In the present it passes over that question in silence.
Gentle priests will say committing suicide is a sin, but it is forgivable without the benefit of confession, because it is too late by then. Insanity, they argue, is a defense. One who takes his or her own life must be crazy. But why crazy? Why not proud? Why not rational? Why won’t the Church say a logical decision to put a fitting end to his or her own life is a choice that a man or woman can make? The Church cannot explain it, though I can see the point of its objection. What is to stop governments from sanctioning suicide by undesirable citizens driven to desperation by state oppression? You can jail an innocent and subject him or her to every indignity until he or she begs to end his or her life. But a cool and calculated decision to commit suicide to escape a terminal illness before it inflicts more pain is another thing altogether, and the distinction can be made.
There are more suicides than snubbed homosexuals. In a United States Supreme Court case, the unprecedented happened: An amicus brief was filed by leading American philosophers arguing for the right to end life as consistent with human dignity and guaranteed by the US Constitution’s right of privacy and control of one’s own life.
Brittany Maynard made plans to take her own life. For that purpose, she moved to the US state of Oregon, where it is legal to do so. A year ago she got happily married to a good man. A year later her doctors said she would be dead in less than a year from a cancer that would first destroy her body in a holocaust of pain before erasing her mind, so why wait?
Now faith, hope and charity will give you grace, but only you can give yourself dignity. Later, she said she may choose to let death take her life before she takes it herself, which shows how rational she was in her decision again to opt for suicide after. The decision must be entirely hers and the Church must respect it, at least in silence, if not by approval. She gathered her friends around her and, like Socrates, swallowed the death pill with a glass of water and passed away, expressing her appreciation for the short life God gave her.