January 16 | 0 COMMENTS print
Steadfast in our vital mission to protect life
This week’s editorial
Attacks on life have inflamed Scottish Catholics this week—from terrorism to abortion to assisted suicide. Cardinal André Vingt-Trois of Paris is urging Catholics to pray that France will continue to show ‘moderation, temperance and control’ in response to the crimes committed in Paris, crimes involving what Pope Francis himself called ‘deviant forms of religion.’
Here in Scotland, it beggars belief that the Assisted Suicide (Scotland) Bill has made it through our legislative process as far as the health committee at the Scottish Parliament, in spite of the moral and legal flaws highlighted in the legislation, in spite of common sense.
No one wants the ill and dying to suffer but life is a gift from God. As Aidan Michael Cook from Care Not Killing Scotland says in this week’s SCO, legalising assisted suicide leaves Scottish law on the matter wide open to abuse.
“Palliative care is undergoing constant improvements: pain is increasingly well managed, and a more holistic approach to end-of-life care is being taken,” he said. “But there is still suffering, and death is being put forward as the answer. But if death is a proportional response to suffering then where does it stop?” (More on page 11).
The SCO mailbag is also heaving with concern about how a Catholic politician can publicly and unapologetically be pro abortion (Jim Murphy SCO January 9), defying immoveable Catholic teaching on the subject in a Catholic newspaper. “Abortion is such a serious offence against mankind and God that we cannot be seen to tolerate any co-operation in it,’ one concerned Catholic said.
Last week’s editorial stated: “We must make peace… It has to be a lasting peace built on respect, support and patience—respect for life and the family, support for those at the fringes of our society and patience for the sick and elderly. This is the message we must send in 2015, to our politicians who have the power to help.”
In this week’s SCO, SPUC Scotland highlights the need to question our political candidates on their views and voting intentions with regards to pro-life issues (page 12.)
The SCO regularly defends life in its news, comment and feature sections. Our readers know where the newspaper, and the Church, stand on these issues. We must also, however, hold politicians who fail to challenge attacks on life, or even go as far as promoting them, up to scrutiny, especially politicians who are Catholic, especially in an election year. This needs to be done in a firm but fair and measured way, not by demonising but by educating.
Our position on protecting life from the moment of conception has not changed, nor has the Church’s.