Cardinal Mahony Asked to Deny Communion to Assisted Suicide
Apr 04, 2007
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez's support is viewed as crucial for assisted suicide bill’s passage.
LOS ANGELES, April 3 2007, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Roger Cardinal Mahony, the head of the Catholic Church in Los Angeles, the largest US Catholic diocese, has publicly criticized a politician in the California legislature for supporting a bill to legalize assisted suicide. But anti-euthanasia activists are asking the Cardinal to put some ecclesiastical muscle into his opposition.
At Mass on Monday, Mahony urged Catholic voters to pressure lawmakers to vote the proposal down. “Assisted suicide is totally unnecessary - not only is it against God's law, God's plan, we simply don't need something like that,” he said. The Cardinal criticized Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, a Catholic, with whom he has discussed the proposal. Nunez's support is viewed as crucial for the bill’s passage.
“We should be troubled that Fabian Nunez - who has worshipped here in this cathedral, is a Catholic - somehow has not understood and grasped the culture of life but has allowed himself to get swept into this other direction, the culture of death,” Mahony said.
The Cardinal’s reference to the phrase made famous by the late Pope John Paul II, however, has failed to impress Canada’s leading anti-euthanasia campaigner.
Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the London Ontario based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, told LifeSiteNews.com that if the Cardinal were serious, he would impose a severe ecclesiastical penalty, one recommended in the past by the Vatican for politicians who advance the culture of death.
Schadenberg said bluntly, “If Nunez persists in his support for the bill, Mahoney should excommunicate Nunez.”
The bill before the State Assembly and approved last week by the Assembly committee, is modelled after the Oregon state law under which, since its passage in 1997, 292 Oregonians have taken their own lives.
Schadenberg said, “This bill is not a minor change to the laws of California. It will give physicians the right to assist in the death of their patients. No safeguards, or change in language can neutralize the effects of such a bill.”
Schadenberg continued, “To support a bill that allows the intentional taking of human life is a grave act that cannot be condoned and must be treated with the strongest response by all people of goodwill who wish to build a society based on the common good.”
The Catholic Church’s code of canon law, under which both Cardinal Mahony and Nunez are bound as Catholics, requires that those who “persist in manifest grave sin” be refused Holy Communion.
Nunez has already responded to the Cardinal with rhetoric common to Catholic “pro-choice” politicians. The Associated Press reports that Nunez's spokesman Steve Maviglio said that while the speaker respects the Cardinal’s opinion “This is another issue of individual choice where the overwhelming majority of Catholics have a different perspective than the official position of the Church.”
“To allow Nunez to continue to receive communion and refer to himself as a Catholic would be a public outrage and a scandal to all people of goodwill, especially to faithful Catholics,” Schadenberg said.
Cardinal Mahony Asked to Deny Communion to Assisted Suicide