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.

Sources

• Catholic Register
• LifeSiteNews
• Image: Lifesitenews

We need things: keepsakes, stuff, tokens, tchotchkes, knickknacks, bits and pieces, junk and treasure.

We carry special objects in our pockets and purses, or place them on shelves and desks in our homes and offices.

As profane and ordinary as the objects may be, they can also be extraordinary. Some things even become objects of transcendence.

Devout people of faith, across religious traditions, often denigrate material goods, suggesting the really real is beyond what can be seen, felt, and heard.

Yet a closer look at religious histories reveals a heart-felt, enduring love for things.

Objects large and small, valuable and worthless are there from the beginning of traditions, creating memories and meanings for the devotees who pray and worship, love and share, make pilgrimage and make music.

To look at religious histories through objects is to follow a new path of historical thinking, with recent studies examining tea, cod, tulips, guns, germs and steel, and how each of these has in its own way "changed the world."

Similar projects can be seen in the British Museum's "A History of the World in 100 Objects," the New York Times' "A History of New York in 50 Objects" or Smithsonian magazine's "101 Objects that Made America."

My interest here is not simply to trail a popular publishing lead, but to say that an understanding of religion is incomplete if it ignores the material things that make it part of what it is.

With that, here is "A History of Religion in 11 Objects"... Continue reading.

Source: HuffingtonPost

Image: The stone of anointing - known as the place where Joseph of Arimathea had Jesus' body prepared for burial Flickr: Guillaume Paumier