Topic of the week

YOUR EXCELLENT leader on assisted dying (12 October) raises many worrying problems about the bill which is to go before Parliament. I am a registered nurse, I am opposed to any euthanasia, and I am deeply troubled by the issue of consent and conscience which has not been fully explored.

Does the bill provide adequate protection for healthcare professionals who refuse to prescribe, dispense and administer poisons, when this is an act that goes against their conscience?

Does the bill allow for healthcare professionals to refuse a request from a person with lasting power of attorney for the euthanasia of a person lacking capacity, when the incapacitated person’s wishes are unclear?

Does the bill protect clinical staff from professional censure from their registering body in any case of conscience? Does the bill prevent litigation against a healthcare professional who declines to be involved in euthanasia?

Will people of faith, not just Catholics, have areas of healthcare – care of the elderly or palliative care – closed off to them due to unintended consequences of this legislation?

JAMES BARHAM
LYMM, CHESHIRE

WHICHEVER “SIDE” one takes on the issue of abortion, there is no denying that the original 1967 legislation has, over the years, loosened; not least via the various amendments to the Act over the years.

So what will the landscape look like in 40 or 50 years, if the proposed assisted dying bill becomes law? Advice for patients (and families) on the most euthanasia-sympathetic doctor? Over the counter pills? Relaxation of time and eligibility restraints?

And most worrying of all, moving from the exception to the norm, as the assisted dying of a relative or neighbour becomes easier to justify and accept. These thoughts leave me cold.

EILEEN FITZPATRICK
ILKLEY, WEST YORKSHIRE

THE PROPOSED move to allow for the intentional ending of a patient’s life is as wrong as it is awful. No doubt all sorts of caveats and safeguards are going to be proposed by the advocates of so-called mercy killing, but we have the drift of the Abortion Act to answer those.

Hospitals, hospices and GP surgeries already have ample provision for the relief of pain – known as the Brompton Cocktail. This is a mix of strong drugs which function as pain relief but has the side-effect of hastening death.

Naturally, the Church teaches that we should alleviate pain, but also that we should not strive officiously to keep alive.

BERNARD CARTWRIGHT
STOURBRIDGE, WEST MIDLANDS

Synod on track

Austen Ivereigh reports on the purposes of the Instrumentum Laboris for the second session of the Synod of Bishops (“The shape of the Church to come”, 5 October) as the measure by which we can follow the gathering’s progress.

I have no misgivings about trusting in the objectives and motives of those involved in the Synod and especially the probity of whatever the outcomes might be.

The preparation, planning and detailed explanation of the initial undertaking in October 2021 excited considerable interest. The invitation to contribute a personal written response was an innovation in itself.

The diocesan and parochial activity it provoked raised attention throughout the media. The opportunity to discuss the perennial issues concerning the life of a Catholic community at the local level was enlightening. And the regular prayer for the success of the Synod united congregations up and down the country.

Ivereigh clearly identifies that we are in the infancy of this phase of the Church’s growth and I am comfortable with that. What concerns me most is my sense of the great distance I feel between my personal commitment in fashioning the Church of the future and what is taking place in Rome.

This is, I feel, largely due to the lack of attention to the significance of this process. If this is the People of God’s moment to act as carers of the Church’s best interests, surely this is the time for liturgies in cathedrals, devotions in churches and the Synod prayer recited at Mass on Sundays.

STEPHEN INNES
CRAWLEY, WEST SUSSEX

Austen Ivereigh makes it clear that every member of the Church must search for what it means to be a Christian. It demands talking, listening and searching for Christ’s values in every person we meet and putting his teachings into action.

He quotes Instrumentum Laboris (69): “For in the Church the exercise of authority constitutes a moderating force in the common source for what the Spirit requires as a ministry at the source of the unity of the people of God.”

However, the Pope’s recent declaration against married or female deacons or married priests makes me conclude that, despite all his wonderful opening up of the Church, Francis betrays this clerical mindset in himself; that he is not listening or is deaf to all that the church members are telling him.

If so, then the hopes for the Church’s future are even further restrained.

STEVE WILSON
WORCESTER

Austen Ivereigh says that the topics of women deacons and LGBT issues have been entrusted to one of the 10 study groups; the subject of celibacy and married priests doesn’t even get that far.

These groups will present brief work in progress reports to the Synod and their conclusions will go to the Pope next year. The Synod will be over by then. In short. the Synod does not want to talk about the priesthood.

I don’t believe the word priest gets a mention in Ivereigh’s article. In its place we have to talk about “clericalism”, the new pejorative description for the priesthood.

But this Synod should be all about the priesthood, and what we can do to make it a better and more attractive vocation for good people, men and women, who will lead this “silent laity”.

PHIL MOORE
STOKE-ON-TRENT

I was bemused by Austen Ivereigh (“View from the Synod”, 12 October) describing the Synod as a train which had set out but had no determined destination and for which, indeed, the track was not yet fully in place.

From my own experience, any such train would never set out: control would block its movement, signallers would not direct it, stationmasters would impound it and perhaps, most importantly, no passengers would be prepared to join it.

Keep up the reporting, Austen, but please ditch the metaphor.

In Domino,

(FR) DAVID SILLINCE
READING, BERKSHIRE

Same-sex blessings

Fr Gregory O’Brien PP is quite wrong to claim that Fiducia Supplicans, issued by the Vatican last December, “permits the blessing of same- sex couples, not as individuals but as couples”.

The reverse is true and the document could not be clearer: a priest who blesses two people who spontaneously approach him (whether in a marriage, or in a same-sex or other kind of irregular relationship) is expressing God’s encouragement and comfort to them as people, for “God never turns away anyone who approaches him”.

Such non-ritualised blessings do not confer approval of what is morally illicit, any more than a priest who so blesses an individual is somehow by that act endorsing every aspect of his or her life.

As Pope Francis said, if he blesses a businessman who maybe exploits people, no one is bothered; but if he blesses a homosexual who is maybe in an irregular relationship, people are in uproar. “This,” he said, “is hypocrisy.”

AUSTEN IVEREIGH
SYNOD HALL, ROME

The art of protest

Hooray for Liz Dodd (12 October) in her truly orthodox, radical and heartfelt affirmation of the place of Jesus in all of us; in Revd Sue Parfitt, in Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland of Just Stop Oil, and even, dare I say, Judge Christopher Hehir, though I suspect in his case he has forgotten.

What, you may ask, has he forgotten that was so characteristic of Jesus? Well, it is heart of course; a compassionate heart, alas nowhere to be seen in the damaging trivia of his judgment, which is why, if another reason is needed, Liz Dodd’s affirmation is so important.

It makes central the Church’s fight for justice for the weak and poor. They are the ones who suffer from high-handed legalistic prejudice and even more in the face of climate collapse.

BENET HAUGHTON
EDINBURGH

Liz Dodd is being disingenuous when she claims that protesters were “imprisoned for not damaging Van Gogh’s Sunflowers” and an Anglican vicar was “suspended because she was arrested for not damaging the Magna Carta”.

The intentions of all those protesters were to cause damage: in both cases it was the protective glass only which preserved the painting and the document. But £10,000 of damage was caused to the frame of the painting, and damage was caused also to the frame containing the Magna Carta by the use of a hammer and chisel.

The fact that the articles were not damaged was the result of luck and speedy intervention on the part of the curators, not any sensibilities on the part of the protesters.

(FR) JULIAN G SHURGOLD
CROYDON, GREATER LONDON

I have enjoyed Liz Dodd’s contributions over the years as she expresses herself in an infectiously enthusiastic style. However, I feel by comparing the social media ideologues of Extinction Rebellion with the honourable campaigners of CND she does herself a disservice.

Whilst CND’s campaigners were also imprisoned, they never blocked access to art in public collections and never threw paint at objects of the nation’s heritage.

The methods of Extinction Rebellion are antagonising majority opinion. The Church of England’s move to suspend the officiating rights of Revd Sue Parfitt following her attempt to damage the Magna Carta seems to me to be reasonable.

Having worked for many years for the British Library, I can confirm that the staff there have quite enough to do to protect the nation’s heritage without having to cope with campaigners determined to make their job more difficult.

BEN BERGONZI
LITTLE CHALFONT, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

Lift to church

I applaud Janet Mitchell for going to her nearest Anglican church where she feels happy and welcomed (Letters, 5 October).

How sad that there was no fellow Catholic parishioner living near enough to her to offer her a lift to the Catholic church. But, regrettably, this is becoming more common in rural areas, with parishes being amalgamated over large areas and churches being closed or reduced to one or two Masses a week.

C.M. ELMS
CORSHAM, WILTSHIRE