By Judie Brown | April 6, 2021 | 4:22pm EDT
A cross stands against the sky. (Photo credit: CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP via Getty Images)
The term “assisted suicide” rolls right off the tongue. Merriam-Webster defines it as “suicide committed by someone with assistance of another person.” But what is it really?
According to the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, suicide “contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God.”
Phoenix, Ariz., Apr 6, 2021 / 08:01 pm (CNA).- Catholic teaching sees the Eucharist as Christ’s transformative sacrifice on the cross and this Holy Communion must only be received worthily. This teaching is not partisan, but it certainly applies to political leaders who back abortion and euthanasia, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix has said in an apostolic exhortation on the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
“Holy Communion is reserved for those, who with God’s grace make a sincere effort to live this union with Christ and His Church by adhering to all that the Catholic Church believes and proclaims to be revealed by God,” Bishop Olmsted said, explaining that Church teaching on this has “always been clear and based on Scripture.”
Intellectual confusion resembling a smog of the mind has been a deadening presence in Catholicism in the years since Vatican Council II. But here and there amid the swirling mists of bad arguments and lame analogies, a small yet significant body of Catholic intellectuals has stood firm in defense of clear thinking and good sense.
For me at least, three stand out: Ralph McInerny, Germain Grisez, and Jude Dougherty. The news that Dougherty, longtime dean of the school of philosophy at the Catholic University of America, had died in early March moves me to pay tribute to them for their contributions to the Church they loved.
Ecocide: Should Destruction of the Planet Be a Crime?
To prosecute and imprison political leaders and corporate executives would require a parsing of legal boundaries and a recalibration of criminal accountability.
April 7, 2021
A refugee from Democratic Republic of Congo, collects water for their vegetable crops at a water pan in Kalobeyei settlement for refugees in Turkana County, Kenya on October 2, 2019. Credit: Luis Tato/AFP via Getty Images
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At many moments in history, humanity’s propensity for wanton destruction has demanded legal and moral restraint. One of those times, seared into modern consciousness, came at the close of World War II, when Soviet and Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau. Photographs and newsreels shocked the conscience of the world. Never had so many witnessed evidence of a crime so heinous, and so without precedent, that a new word genocide was needed to describe it, and in short or
Q. My boyfriend and I are starting to have conversations about marriage. I am a Catholic; he is a Baptist. I have not felt called to have children and have health issues that will make it difficult to get pregnant. My boyfriend is not primarily interested in having kids.
I know that to be married in the Catholic Church, couples are expected to be open to having children. Is it possible to get married in the Church if you re not open to having kids? (City and state withheld)
A. Your understanding of the Church s view of marriage is correct. If a couple enters into marriage consciously intending never to have children, that would make the marriage, in the Church s eyes, invalid.