Cardinal Dolan Critical Suicide Project Assisted in New York

Cardinal Timothy Dolan described this week as “a disaster about to occur” a New York bill that seeks to legalize medically assisted suicide, after the State Assembly advanced the measure last week.

In a communication Published on Tuesday, Cardinal Dolan – New York Arzobispo – said: “For people of faith who believe in the holiness of life from conception to natural death, the only idea that a doctor gives you a recipe to finish your life prematurely is contrary to everything we value.”

“But it is not necessary to be religious to see that assisted suicide is a terrible idea. It is Pandora’s classic box; once open, its consequences cannot be contained.”

The New York State Assembly approved the Medical Aid Law to die on April 29, with 81 votes in favor and 67 against. If it becomes law, it will allow adults with terminal illnesses to request medicines to end their life.

Cardinal Dolan reflected Tuesday about the last weeks of Pope Francis’s life and how “he was not afraid to let us see him die, as well as his beloved predecessor, Pope San Juan Paul II.”

“Both knew that our value is based on who we are as children of God, not what we can do,” wrote the archbishop.

Dolan stressed that the New York bill lacks security guidelines, arguing that any type of doctor can prescribe the medicine and that the meeting to request it does not have to be face -to -face.

Nor is it necessary to ask patients if they have contemplated suicide or if they have been treated for any mental health condition.

“How is this compassion?” Dollan questioned on Tuesday, arguing that the measure forces doctors “to lie in death certificates by stating that the cause of death was the underlying disease of the person and not what really killed her: the lethal combination of medications.”

He explained that the bill is presented in the midst of the successful work of New York Governor, Kathy Hochul, to reduce suicide rates in the state. Hochul promoted initiatives to help schools, hospitals, lifeguards, veterans and an aid line during a “mental health crisis.”

Cardinal Dolan said he praised his “very successful suicide prevention efforts.”

“But,” he continued, “a new law that authorizes suicide while the State simultaneously pursues a suicide prevention policy is equivalent to making holes on one side of the ship while watering from the other is removed.”

The purple pointed out the “long and proud history of the Catholic Church in health care.”

“We have opened the first hospitals in the United States. We have attended victims of war, measles, homeless people, diseases, violence, AIDS and all kinds of man known by man. We have also cared for the emotional, psychological and spiritual evils of our fellow men.”

“Suicide authorized by the state completely disrupts everything that society knows and believes about medicine,” said Dolan. “Doctors go from being healers to murderers.”

Meanwhile, “what is proposed as compassion for the terminal patients” becomes “a duty, since the elderly, disabled and sick feel pressured to end their lives and stop being a burden for others.”

“All stages of life offer lessons – for us and for others – but perhaps none more than the end of life, as Pope Francis taught so eloquently,” said the cardinal.

Dolan recalled that Pope Francis called the assisted suicide “the patient’s discard” and “false compassion.”

“New York and all our states can do better than this,” said Dolan.

“Instead, let’s focus our formidable efforts to strengthen people’s care at the end of life. They are finishing the race. Let them go with our hands up, as God and nature wanted it,” concluded the purple.

Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in CNA.