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Washington D.C., Feb 28, 2017 / 02:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- While physician-assisted suicide is promoted as empowering terminally-ill patients, it could result in the poor being coerced to take their lives, experts warned at an event this week.

“When you deal with the issue of poverty, this immediately rises up – care is expensive, assisted suicide is not,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said at a Monday panel on physician-assisted suicide at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

The elderly sick may also be taken advantage of, the senator added. They may be told by their families that they are a “burden” on others, or they may simply feel that way.  Then “this becomes a guilt issue” as they consider requesting a lethal prescription, he said.

Physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in the District of Columbia and in six states – Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, and Colorado via state laws, and in Montana through a state supreme court ruling.

Some 24 states areconsidering legalizing it, according to the group Death with Dignity that promotes these laws around the country. These so-called “Death with Dignity laws” allow patients diagnosed with a terminal illness with six months or less to live to request a lethal prescription from a doctor.

These laws have “otherwise been rejected by the people,” noted Ryan Anderson, the William E. Simon senior research fellow in American principles and public policy at the Heritage Foundation. The “vast majority of the states have considered” the laws already and rejected them, he added.

Critics have also warned about loopholes in the laws that provide room for dangerous abuses to take place.

Patients may “doctor-shop” until they find a physician who approves their request for a lethal prescription, even though the doctor may barely know their medical history. Or one witness for the patient’s decision to request a prescription may be a financial beneficiary of their death.

However, groups like Compassion and Choices and Death with Dignity are pushing for these laws to be introduced in state legislatures. And if legalized, physician-assisted suicide could prove especially dangerous to vulnerable populations like the poor, the elderly, and the disabled whose health care costs are seen by some as burdensome.

“Already because so many coverage decisions are based on financial considerations, people with disabilities have difficulty accessing the care we need,” Lindsay Baran, a policy analyst at The National Council on Independent Living, said in a written statement read at Monday’s panel.

In Oregon, she said, “we have several stories from people who have had doctor-recommended treatments denied only to be offered the assisted suicide drug as one of their covered alternatives” by insurance providers.

Physician-assisted suicide can indeed be “promoted” as a “cost-effective treatment,” Dr. G. Kevin Donovan, M.D. M.A., professor at Georgetown University Medical Center,  warned at the panel.

Modern palliative care is capable of limiting the physical pain of terminally-ill patients, he added, answering one of the chief arguments of assisted suicide proponents about patients suffering pain for months on end as they prepare to die.

Palliative care is still “underrepresented in the practice of medicine right now,” Donovan said, yet “with additional funding” it could become more commonplace.

“Will palliative care be made more accessible when physician-assisted suicide is a legal option? Those who provide funding for health care know that death is always cost-effective,” he cautioned.

In California, Catholic opponents of assisted suicide were “told repeatedly by legislators” that “this will never be a publicly-funded benefit,” said Kathleen Buckley Domingo, associate director of life ministry for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Yet $2 million was set aside for these drugs by the state of California while 13 million people on the state’s Medicare fund are not covered for palliative care, she noted.

“Especially in our immigrant communities…especially in our poor inner city communities, there’s a huge disparity in the kind of health care that people are receiving,” she said. “They’re on MediCal, and this is now the cheapest and easiest option.”

The drugs are cheap and also easily available, she said, noting that they can be shipped directly to people’s homes.

One woman, Stephanie Packer in Orange, Calif., reported being denied chemotherapy treatment by her insurer while being offered cheap coverage for a lethal prescription, in a documentary produced by the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network.

The elderly sick are also vulnerable to such laws because they may be told by their families that they are a “burden” on others or they may simply feel that way.  

In fact, in 2014 the State of Washington reported that of those who died in the state’s Death With Dignity program, almost 60 percent said they were concerned about being a “burden on family, friends/caregivers.”

“We have privileged assisted suicide over good medical care,” Donovan said, so much so that in California, by law if a hospitalized psychiatric patient has a terminal medical diagnosis, they “have to be released” if they request a lethal prescription.

“This is somebody who isn’t entitled to make decisions for themselves. That’s why they’re in a psychiatric hospital,” Donovan said.

Ultimately, assisted suicide laws are not about empowerment but rather about special interests, the panel said.

Legalizing it “doesn’t really give patients any new rights or protections,” Donovan insisted, as suicide is currently “legal in all 50 states,” but “it’s just not legal to help someone or promote it.” Rather, “it’s a physician-protection law,” he said.

The laws are supported by “very few people” who tend to be more well-educated and wealthier, but “those who are put at risk” are many, especially the elderly and those in lower-income brackets.

“I think those are usually called special interest bills,” he said.

The bills are also based on a “false reasoning” of autonomy, he added.

“If these bills wanted to honor choice, free choice,” he continued, “then how do we justify restricting this to people who are going to be dead in 6 months?” Why not those with nine or 12 month diagnoses, he asked, or the chronically ill or emotionally ill.

Even though proponents of assisted suicide argue that it saves patients from enduring months of painful suffering at the end of their lives, Donovan explained that many physicians may offer incomplete or even incorrect terminal diagnoses.

Two acts physicians do not perform well, he argued, are to “prognosticate the end of someone’s life” and “overdose our patients, lethally.”
 

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Vatican City, Feb 28, 2017 / 04:07 pm (CNA).- God pours out all of Himself on His people, said Pope Francis on Tuesday, explaining that God gives everything to those who surrender everything.

“Here is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel, who will not receive a hundred times more, now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come,” said the Pope, repeating the words of the Gospel of Mark in his daily homily.

Speaking to those gathered at Casa Santa Marta, the Pope reflected on the rich, young man in the Gospel who leaves saddened after Jesus asks him to give away all his possessions. He said the man wanted to follow Jesus, but chose money as a master above God.

Peter then asks Jesus what will happen to himself and the disciples who have given up everything, and the Pope said “it’s almost as if Peter is passing Jesus the bill.” But Jesus ensures that God’s gift will be overflowing – whoever gives everything will receive everything, because it is impossible for God to give less than everything.

Pope Francis said that when God gives everything, He gives fully of himself. The fullness emptied out on the cross, he explained, is the fullness of God. He said this fullness emptied out is the gift of God, but this Christian way of receiving is not an easy path.

Reiterating the words in Sirach, the Pope offered directions to following the Christian way: “pay homage to the Lord, and do not spare your freewill gifts. With each contribution show a cheerful countenance, and pay your tithes in a spirit of joy. Give to the Most High as he has given to you, generously, according to your means.”

Happiness was removed from the face of the rich man in the Gospel, said the Pope, adding that the man had walked away glum and downtrodden because he was unable to receive the fullness of the cross.

In contrast, Pope Francis concluded, are the examples of the saints who prove their complete receptivity with faces and eyes full of happiness. He repeated the words of the Chilean saint Alberto Hurtado, and asked that we may all receive the grace to repeat “I’m happy, Lord, I’m happy,” even in the face of poverty and suffering.

 

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Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Feb 28, 2017 / 04:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishop of the local Church where Medjugorje is located reiterated on Sunday his long-held belief that the alleged Marian apparitions at the site are false.

“The position of this Curia throughout this period has been clear and resolute: these are not true apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar-Duvno wrote in a Feb. 26 statement on his diocesan website.

He referred to investigations into the authenticity of the supposed apparitions that began with the diocese in 1982, and which have continued to the present time at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The alleged apparitions originally began June 24, 1981, when six children in Medjugorje, a town in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, began to experience phenomena which they have claimed to be apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

According to these six “seers,” the apparitions contained a message of peace for the world, a call to conversion, prayer and fasting, as well as certain secrets surrounding events to be fulfilled in the future.

These apparitions are said to have continued almost daily since their first occurrence, with three of the original six children – who are now young adults – continuing to receive apparitions every afternoon because not all of the “secrets” intended for them have been revealed.

Since their beginning, the alleged apparitions have been a source of both controversy and conversion, with many flocking to the city for pilgrimage and prayer, and some claiming to have experienced miracles at the site, while many others claim the visions are non-credible.

The bishop holds the supposed apparitions to be nothing but a manipulation of the visionaries and the priests who work with them.

Bishop Peric, who was ordained a priest of the diocese which he now heads in 1969, emphasized his devotion to Mary, and his incredulity regarding the alleged apparitions in Medjugorje.

“During the course of my episcopal ministry, first as coadjutor (1992/93) and later as ordinary, with preaching and the publication of books, as well as with more than fifty Marian and Mariological articles, I have tried to present the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the incarnation and the work of the Son of God and Her Son, and her intercession for the whole Church, of which she is mother according to grace. At the same time I have highlighted, as was done by my predecessor of happy memory, Bishop Pavao Zanic, the non-authenticity of the apparitions, which by this time have reached the number of  47,000.”

The statement delves extensively in what Bishop Radic considers the ambiguousness of the apparition.

“The female figure who supposedly appeared in Medjugorje behaves in a manner completely different from the real Virgin Mother of God in the apparitions currently recognized as authentic by the Church: usually she does not speak first, she laughs in a strange way, before some questions she disappears and appears again, she obeys the 'visionaries' and the local pastor who make her come down from the hill into the church even against her will. She doesn't know with certainty how many more times she will appear, she allows some of those present to step on her veil extended on the ground, and to touch her dress and her body. This is not the Virgin of the Gospels.”

The bishop also takes issue with the visionaries' request for a “visible sign” from the Virgin and the promise from one the visionaries that there will be a sign at the top of the hill in the form of water.

“After almost four decades there is no sign whatsoever, nor water, just fantasies,” the bishop wrote.

The statement also makes detailed reference to the inconsistencies among the various visionaries regarding the purpose of the apparitions, as well as their duration.

“All the 'visionaries' but one agreed that the Virgin would appear for three more days … but she appeared to have changed her mind and still 'appears' for 37 years,” Bishop Radic said.

The statement mentions other irregularities, such as a strange trembling in the apparition, a false anniversary of the beginning of the apparition, inconsistencies in whether the apparition has a child, inexplicable silences, strange messages, discrepancies in dress, nervousness rather than peace among the seers, scandalous touching of the apparition, and intentional manipulation of the apparition.

“Considering everything that has been examined and studied by this diocesan Curia, including the investigation of the first seven days of the alleged apparitions, we can affirm in peace: the Madonna has not appeared in Medjugorje! This is the truth that we sustain, and we believe in the word of Jesus, according to which the truth will set us free.”

In April 1991, the bishops of the former Yugoslavia determined that “on the basis of the research that has been done, it is not possible to state that there were apparitions or supernatural revelations.”

On the basis of those findings the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith directed in October 2013 that clerics and the faithful “are not permitted to participate in meetings, conferences or public celebrations during which the credibility of such 'apparitions' would be taken for granted.”

In January 2014, a Vatican commission completed an investigation into the supposed apparitions' doctrinal and disciplinary aspects, and was to have submitted its findings to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Pope Francis visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in June 2015, but declined to stop at Medjugorje during his trip.

Earlier this month, Francis appointed Archbishop Henryk Hoser of Warszawa-Praga as a delegate of the Holy See to look into the pastoral situation at Medjugorje. The Polish archbishop is to “suggest possible pastoral initiatives for the future” after acquiring a deeper knowledge of the local pastoral situation.

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