January 16 | comments icon 0 COMMENTS     print icon print

11-PALLIATIVE-CARE

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.

 

 

Leave a Reply

latest opinions

Woman’s place at Pope Francis’ right hand?

January 17th, 2020 | comments icon 0 COMMENTS

With reform in the air, the Catholic News Service surveys...


A look inside the ‘prison in all but name’

January 17th, 2020 | comments icon 0 COMMENTS

Frances Gallagher describes her first visit inside Dungavel Immigration Detention...


Reading through the whole Bible in one year

January 17th, 2020 | comments icon 0 COMMENTS

Fr Jamie McMorrin hopes to get through the entire Bible...


New book brings celibacy into the spotlight

January 17th, 2020 | comments icon 0 COMMENTS

Cindy Wooden on Pope Benedict’s decision to break his long-held...



Social media

Latest edition

page1

exclusively in the paper

  • MP speaks up for the unborn at Westminster during debate
  • Glasgow honours St Mungo 1502 years on
  • School launches video on homelessness
  • Piecing together the story of an unexpected banquet
  • Mary McGinty on the birth of her new granddaughter

Previous editions

Previous editions of the Scottish Catholic Observer newspaper are only available to subscribed Members. To download previous editions of the paper, please subscribe.

note: registered members only.

Read the SCO