Anglican archbishop criticises Carey over assisted dying

The leader of the Anglican Church in Ireland has rejected the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey’s stance on assisted dying, describing it as “perplexing”.

Writing in the Belfast News Letter, the Archbishop of Armagh, Richard Clarke, said Lord Carey’s intervention in the debate showed that the fundamental Christian tenet – that our life on earth is not our property to do with as we choose – had “eluded” the former leader of the Anglican Communion.

The Church of Ireland primate also regretted that the hospice movement should be virtually starved of public money and had to devote so much effort to securing its financial survival.

In July, Lord Carey wrote in the  Daily Mail that he had changed his mind on assisted dying and was “less certain of my opposition to the right to die”. He said he would support Lord Falconer’s bill to legislate for assisted dying, which is currently before Parliament. 

However, Archbishop Clarke, whose wife died of cancer five years ago, said the danger of moving towards assisted dying is the “insidious pressure” it would put on many people at the most vulnerable time of their life.

“There are few people who do not hate the thought of being ‘a burden’ on those they love, and they might indeed believe that asking to die would be an act of generosity to those around them,” he wrote.

“Given the costs of care for the terminally ill (which often fall on a family), unselfish people might well believe that they owe it to their families not to waste the money that they had hoped to leave for loved ones, on their continued care.”

He also warned believers in Ireland that the current debate on assisted dying is not somebody else’s debate.

The discussion on the issue in Ireland is already “well under way here, at dinner tables if not yet in council rooms”, he said.