Catholic and Protestant bishops in the German provinces of Lower Saxony and Bremen have agreed that in emergency cases assisted suicide in church hospitals cannot be categorically excluded.
However, assisting people to commit suicide “must not become a normal procedure” and “neither individual persons nor institutions may be placed under the obligation to assist people to die, borderline cases cannot be regulated by law”, the Catholic and Protestant bishops of Lower Saxony and Bremen said in a 15 March ecumenical statement.
It was the first time that church leaders from both main Churches in Germany have published a joint declaration on assisted dying.
In their two-page 12-point declaration, the bishops point out that dealing with patients who were determined to commit suicide was a particular challenge for church institutions. “An institutional offer of assisted dying is incompatible with our self-perception of Church. There is, however, no categorical answer as to whether, in certain emergency or borderline situations, assisted suicide can be tolerated in church institutions. Besides the sel-fperception of those who wish to commit suicide, the responsibility for relations, roommates, co-workers and others must be considered,” the statement says.
Bishops’ conference vice-president, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, who as Bishop of Osnabrück, in Lower Saxony, is one of the signatories of the ecumenical declaration, told the German Tagespost that not categorically excluding borderline situations “in no way calls into question the fundamental rejection of assisted suicide”.
If, however, a patient who was fully aware that a hospital rejected assisted suicide and despite all efforts to persuade the patient not to commit suicide, he or she decided in favour of assisted dying, “should we then turn them out?” Bishop Bode asked. That was an example of such a “borderline situation”. Bishop Heiner Wilmer of Hildesheim and Auxiliary Bishop Wilfried Theising of Oldenburg, the two other Catholic bishops who signed the declaration, agreed with Bishop Bode.
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