This is just truly repulsive. There's no two ways to describe it.
A Canadian church was recently the site of an assisted suicide ceremony held for one of its members diagnosed with ALS, better known in the U.S. as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Churchill Park United Church of Winnipeg became the first church in Manitoba to host the controversial practice, which it described as a "Crossing Over Ceremony" last month for 86-year-old Betty Sanguin.
The church's leadership team had unanimously approved Sanguin's request for the assisted suicide ceremony that was held in the sanctuary, as she had strong ties to the congregation.
Say it from the rooftops, folks:
Suicide is wrong. Most major faiths affirm this unequivocally. The Roman Catholic Catechism, for instance, states:
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.
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, meanwhile, argues similarly:
The 'taking away the life of ourselves,' as the Catechism states, is a violation of the sixth commandment because it is unlawful killing. The same standard applied to the murder of our neighbor must also be applied to ourselves. If it is unlawful to kill our neighbor because he is created in the image of God, it is unlawful for us to take our own lives because we, likewise, are created in the image of God. In other words, we may not destroy the image of God that we ourselves are.
The Southern Baptist Convention argues the same:
WHEREAS, The Bible teaches that God created all human life in His own image and declares human life to be sacred from conception until death; and
WHEREAS, Southern Baptists have historically affirmed biblical teaching regarding the sanctity of human life; and
WHEREAS, A growing "quality of life" ethic has led to increasing acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide in the United States.
Therefore, Be it RESOLVED, That we the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 9-11, 1992, affirm the biblical prohibition against the taking of innocent human life by another person, or oneself, through euthanasia or assisted suicide...
Even denominations that have no expressed statement on assisted suicide, like the Christian Reformed Church, still outline the basic Christian principle against "the wanton or arbitrary destruction of any human being at any stage of its development from the point of conception to the point of death."
A church that hosts a "Crossing Over Ceremony" for a suicidal member is participating in a grotesque perversion of centuries of firm Christian religious teaching.
It's no joke, also, that this is pretty much straight out of the dystopian literature playbook: The 1993 book The Giver includes a description of the "ceremony of release," one in which elderly members of the community—deemed past the point of useful life—are euthanized:
"[The] telling of his life … is always first. Then the toast. We all raised our glasses and cheered. We chanted the anthem. He made a lovely good-bye speech. And several of us made little speeches wishing him well.
He just bowed to all of us and then walked, like they all do, through the special door in the Releasing Room. But you should have seen his look. Pure happiness, I'd call it."
That ghastly scenario is no longer fiction; it's fact. This is the world we live in now. And it's not good.
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