New York Democrats Want Catholic Hospitals to Kill People
Robert Hicks, the Archbishop Hicks of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, is suing New York. The one-party state of New York wants to force Catholic hospitals to kill people. Democrats don’t want to recognize religious freedom and the right to conscience. That is what dictators do in one-party states.
The Archbishop wrote an op-ed on the matter at the Wall Street Journal that New York is trying to change how we care—by forcing Catholics to help people kill themselves through what legislators have euphemistically named the Medical Aid in Dying Act.
While the law offers the pretense of a religious exemption, the state still demands that healthcare providers counsel their dying patients about what the state believes are the benefits of assisted suicide.
Some Catholic facilities, including the Carmelite Sisters’ convent in Hartsdale, have been told that they will have no religious exemption at all. And even the institutions that do manage to receive the condescending gift of a state-issued exemption are still required to be complicit in the act of suicide.
If they do grant an exemption in a rare exception, they require them to find people to kill the person. They also would have to transport them to their death. Then, they have to sign a death certificate swearing the person died of disease, not suicide. They want semi-cloistered nuns to do this, selling their souls.
The Archbishop continued:
As Catholics, we refuse the chilling message that life becomes disposable when care becomes costly. Jesus calls us to care for the sick and dying with his love. He calls us to affirm the dignity and value of every unique and unrepeatable human life until its natural end.
Many patients seek out Catholic healthcare because it is characterized by the compassionate presence of caregivers, which is one of the most important aspects of palliative care—caring for patients’ hearts and souls as well as their bodies. Forcing the Catholic healthcare network in the Archdiocese of New York to facilitate suicide threatens the deeply trusted caregiver-patient relationship on which thousands of New Yorkers depend. It dismantles our compassionate care. No caregiver should face government punishment for refusing to end a human life.
Of course, they require that to erode the Church’s beliefs and rights. In an authoritarian state, the State comes first.
Becket has taken on the case of Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. Letitia James. James is a communist Democrat.
Image: Falco Pixabay
