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A Canadian archbishop has said that priests should not give the sacrament of anointing of the sick to a person who is intending to die by assisted suicide.
Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa said it is inappropriate for a person intent on assisted suicide to request this sacrament.
“Asking your priest to be present to something that is in direct contradiction to our Catholic values is not fair to the pastor,” Archbishop Prendergast said.
“Of course a pastor will try and dissuade a patient from requesting suicide and will pray with them and their family, but asking him to be present is in effect asking him to condone a serious sin.”
A person who requests a lethal injection “lacks the proper disposition for the anointing of the sick”, he said.
“Asking to be killed is gravely disordered and is a rejection of the hope that the rite calls for and tries to bring into the situation.”
Archbishop Prendergast said a priest should go when his presence is requested to pray for the person or to try to dissuade them from assisted suicide.
But withholding the sacrament can be a pastoral way to help a patient realise the gravity of their decision.
“The rite is for people who are gravely ill or labour under the burden of years and it contains the forgiveness of sins as part of the rite, in either form,” he said.
“But we cannot be forgiven pre-emptively for something we are going to do — like ask for assisted suicide when suicide is a grave sin.”
Last year, Canada’s Supreme Court gave the green light for assisted suicide and euthanasia for some patients.
The nation’s parliament has until June to come up with a law to govern the practice.
The advent of legalised assisted-suicide in Canada means priests and hospital chaplains will inevitably face moral challenges.
Montreal Archbishop Christian Lépine compared a priest attending to a person intent on assisted suicide to seeing someone ready to jump to their death from a bridge and rushing to talk them out of it.
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