By Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register, February 21, 2022
Edward Pentin is the Register’s Senior Contributor and EWTN News Vatican Analyst. He began reporting on the Pope and the Vatican with Vatican Radio before moving on to become the Rome correspondent for EWTN’s National Catholic Register. …
Cardinal Willem Eijk, a medical doctor and a member of the academy, firmly rejected the support, saying assisted suicide and euthanasia both bear ‘the same moral responsibility’ in carrying out a termination of life.
VATICAN CITY — Two members of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life have come under fire for publicly urging support for assisted suicide as a tactic to prevent the legalization of voluntary euthanasia in Italy.
Jesuit Father Carlo Casalone, a professor of moral theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, proposed such an approach that critics stress fully contradicts Church teaching in a Jan. 15 article in the Jesuit periodical La Civilta Cattolica — a journal whose articles are cleared by the Secretariat of State.
His view was supported by fellow academy member Marie-Jo Thiel, professor of ethics at the University of Strasbourg, who wrote in the French newspaper Le Monde on Jan. 31 that Father Casalone’s suggestion was a sign of a broader change in the Church’s position. …