TEACHERS and students now have easy access to an online resource that clearly explains why the Catholic Church supports palliative care, but rejects euthanasia.
The Church’s ‘Care First’ approach to end-of-life care is given voice on a new ‘Catholic identity’ page available on the Brisbane Catholic Education website.
It is a timely educational tool since Queensland’s MP’s are preparing to debate legalising Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) next month.
Other states – Victoria and Western Australia – have legalised euthanasia, Tasmania and South Australia have passed laws that will allow VAD to start, and New South Wales is set to follow with a vote on the issue.
Content on the new webpage is derived from a video-link panel discussion conducted by journalist Madonna King in October last year, while the Queensland Law Reform Commission was hearing views and perspectives on the possible introduction of Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) laws into Queensland.
The BCE resource serves as a discussion starting point for teachers and students, with detailed information and insights from Catholic specialist doctors, advocates and church leaders including Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge and Fr Frank Brennan, currently Professor of Law at Australian Catholic University.
Video answers from the experts debunk myths and misunderstandings about the official Catholic view on end-of-life care.
And the material gives a clear definition and understanding of what palliative care is and why it must be offered as an alternative to VAD.
“Our whole community is so unfamiliar these days with what is normal dying, what happens when people get older, frailer… and something happens that brings them to the close of their life,” Dr Judith McEniery, a palliative medicine specialist, said in one video clip response.
“I’d like people to be educated – both the public and our health care professionals – so that people realise that assisted suicide changes what doctors and health professionals do – it changes the very core of their approach, and that there is so much that can be done that we already have the means to do,”
In another video clip, Archbishop Coleridge said euthanasia or VAD represented an “unexpressed hopelessness” – a fear of death and a desperate desire to control it.
He said faith, at its best – a great mystery of infinite love – enabled people like St Francis of Assisi to talk about death as not something to be feared but embraced.
“Faith can make all the difference. It transfigures the horror (of dying) into something that can almost be a gift,” he said.
Also on BCE’s Catholic Identity web page, Archbishop Coleridge gives a nine minute video message clarifying a Catholic perspective to voluntary assisted dying and introduces the new resources.
