Belgium's Brothers of Charity may have to sever ties with their 15 psychiatric hospitals if their lay-dominated board of directors defies an order by Pope Francis to revoke a decision to allow euthanasia on the premises.
Rome gave the order’s Belgian chapter an ultimatum last month to do so by the end of August. In a terse statement noting “possible measures by the Vatican”, the chapter said it would review the decision.
The board’s next meeting is scheduled for 11 September, the order’s global head Brother René Stockman told the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire. He was confident the three brothers on the board would follow "the Magisterium of the Church" but not sure the 11 lay directors would also agree.
Former European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, one of the lay directors, cast doubt on Stockman’s preferred outcome with a tweet in mid-August that said: "The time of 'Roma locuta, causa finita' is long past".
Stockman, who is also Belgian, condemned the chapter's decision soon after it was announced in late April.
Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002. The board decided to allow it, even for people not in the terminal stage of illness, out of respect for the autonomy of patients who no longer want to live.
Stockman said the decision relativised the Church’s absolute respect for life and showed Belgium was so secularised that “certain points of Church doctrine are unjustly considered almost outmoded".
"It's almost fashionable today to take leave of one's life with a glass of champagne in one's hand," he told the Belgian daily De Tijd.
If the lay directors defy the Vatican ultimatum, Stockman said the order was ready to pull out of its psychiatric clinics, which have been part of their mission since the Brothers were founded in Belgium in 1807 as the Hospital Brothers of Saint Vincent.
"Where can we contribute anything anymore? If there is no longer an extra value we can add, then we have to be consistent and dare to give it all up," he said.
In the neighbouring Netherlands, where euthanasia is also legal, the four political parties negotiating a new government after the March elections have reportedly agreed not to extend it to elderly people "tired of life”, as Belgium has. Liberal parties supported this step but the socially conservative Christian Union blocked it.
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