Newsletter

Fifth Sunday of Easter

April 28th 2024

 

My dear parishioners at St. Mary’s and St. Paul’s,

 

The Bishops of Scotland have asked that the following letter will be read out in all of Scotland’s 460 parishes at the Masses on 27/28 April:

 

“Called to Care not to Kill: a Pastoral Letter on Assisted Suicide.”

In the parable of the Vine and the Branches, Jesus teaches us that we are one community, one family and one society. We live in a world where any one of our decisions affects all of us. We are brothers and sisters with responsibility to each other. In living out our responsibilities for each other in our families, many of us will have first hand experience of being with loved ones as they pass from this world. It can be a harrowing and difficult experience, but it can also be a precious time of shared love and memories. In the context of our responsibilities as a wider society, we are grateful to the medical, nursing and care staff who support our loved ones in their last weeks, days and hours. Sadly, however, palliative care is underfunded and limited in Scotland, and our Parliament should focus energies on improving palliative care rather on contemplating assisted suicide or euthanasia.

 

The Private Member’s Bill to introduce assisted suicide for those aged sixteen and over, recently published in the Scottish Parliament, amounts to a rejection of the common responsibility we owe to each other and to those who are ill and dying. Campaigners call it assisted dying when what they really mean is assisted suicide. Palliative care and the process by which families and communities accompany and support those in the final moments of their lives is what we all usually mean by assisted dying What is now being proposed is that doctors hand a lethal concoction of drugs to a patient to kill themselves. It is a direct, intentional action to end the patient’s life and truly crosses a Rubicon in Scotland.

 

In countries where assisted suicide has been legalised, palliative care provision has stalled and hospices which refuse to offer assisted suicide have had their funding cut or stopped altogether, including Catholic hospices. This is perhaps why three quarters of our palliative care doctors in Scotland said they would refuse to participate in assisted suicide, and just under half said they would resign if they were required to administer it. These are the very specialists who deal with our brothers and sisters at the end of their lives and who assure us that their care can cope with the suffering their patients experience. We trust our doctors to be concerned for our life, health and wellbeing and we do not want to think of them being put into the position of raising the question with our loved ones of whether they would be better off dead. Killing is not medical treatment. Countries where assisted suicide or euthanasia has been legalised have seen safeguards eroded, and many have expanded eligibility criteria to now include people with arthritis, anorexia, autism and dementia. Even little children are being euthanized in these countries that are not so different from our own. The experience of these countries shows that assisted suicide is almost immediately uncontrollable.

At a time when suicide is on the rise in Scotland and we are doing our best to reduce it, what message are we sending to those who are vulnerable when we say that suicide is okay provided it is overseen by a doctor? Laws like this normalise suicide and send a message that some people are beyond hope. Assisted suicide, which allows us to kill our brothers and sisters, takes us down a dangerous spiral that always puts at risk the most vulnerable members of our society, including the elderly, the disabled and those who struggle with mental health; all those in fact who cannot stand up for themselves. It is little wonder the Glasgow Disability Alliance has said the assisted suicide proposal sends a message to disabled people that they are a burden and puts pressure on them to make a choice to die. That is why it is no surprise that in Oregan, consistently around half of those who choose assisted suicide do so because they feel they are a burden on their families or on their communities and healthcare systems. When vulnerable people, including the elderly and disabled, express concerns about being a burden, the appropriate response is not to suggest that they have a duty to die; rather, it is to commit to meeting their needs and providing the care and compassion they need to help them live.

 

When our society is already marked by so many inequalities, we do not need assisted suicide to put intolerable pressure on our most disadvantaged who do not have a voice in this debate. Implicit in assisted suicide is the suggestion that an individual, in certain circumstances, can lose their value and worth. However as stated in the Church’s recent declaration on Human Dignity, even in its sorrowful state, human life carries a dignity that must always be upheld and there are no circumstances under which human life could lose its dignity and be put to an end.

The Bishops Conference of Scotland urges the Catholic community to contact MSP’s urging them to work collaboratively to improve palliative care, and to reject the dangerous proposal to legalise assisted suicide, which would devalue life and put immense pressure on the most vulnerable to end their lives prematurely.

We are called to care, not to kill.

Yours devotedly in Christ,

The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland

 

I offer here the Schedule for the daily liturgy:

 

Monday April 29th: Mass at 10am

Rosary at 9.40am

Tuesday April 30th: Mass at 10am

Rosary at 10am

Wednesday May 1st: Mass at 10am

Rosary at 9.40am

Thursday May 2nd: Mass at 10am

Rosary at 10am

 

Donations to St. Mary and St. Paul’s Parish, Hamilton: sincere thanks to all who make a donation to the upkeep and mission of our parish. As you know the parish is a registered charity and depends on donations to continue its ministry, which extends way beyond those who come along to church on a Sunday. At the beginning of the new financial year it is a good moment to ask you to consider signing up to Gift Aid your donations, which means the government, if you are a tax-payer, donates 25 pence for every £1 that you donate. Would you consider making your donation by Standing Order? Please ask for a Gift Aid Form; it makes a huge difference to the upkeep of our parish.

 

Recently Deceased: Fiona Seal, Marion Russell, Margo Allen, Ann McLaughlin, Richard Brannan, Ann Quigley, Fr. Martin Chambers, Fr. Desmond Broderick, Fr. John Chalmers.

 

Special Remembrance: Alice and Michael Sweeney, Tom McCabe, Theresa McCartney,

George Scott, Hannah Devlin, Angelina Di Marco, Ida McKeown, Tommy Maxwell, and all our deceased relatives and friends and the benefactors of St. Mary’s and St. Paul’s.