The Archbishop of Canterbury has joined UK Catholic leaders in warning that any governmental policy supporting assisted dying is "dangerous" and could lead to a “slippery slope” whereby more people could feel compelled to forcibly end their lives.
Speaking to the <em>BBC</em> ahead of the first reading today of a Parliament Bill that would give terminally ill people in England and Wales the right to end their lives, the head of the Church of England spoke candidly about his own experiences both with parishioners struggling with their parents or relatives and with his own parents in relation to the issue of more elderly or ill people feeling they have become a “burden" upon others.
“For 30 years as a priest I've sat with people at their bedside. And people have said, ‘I want my mum, I want my daughter, I want my brother to go because this is so horrible,’” he <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9dn42xqg4o"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">told the <em>BBC</em></mark></a>.
He went on to say that, as a teenager, he had sometimes harboured similar thoughts about his own father in the final years of his life, as he struggled with alcoholism. He also referred to the death of his 93-year-old mother, Jane, last year, saying she had described feeling like a “burden”.
While the archbishop says he does not want people to feel guilty for having such thoughts, he told the <em>BBC</em> he is worried people will feel compelled to ask to die if they feel like a burden, emphasising that such an idea is morally wrong.
He also says he has noted a marked degradation during his lifetime in the idea and belief that “everyone, however useful they are, is of equal worth to society”. He said the disabled, ill and elderly are too often overlooked and in a way that could have an impact on whether they might be influenced to access assisted suicide, or "assisted dying", as referred to in the BBC article.
Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who introduced the Bill today, 16 October, told the <em>BBC</em> she disagrees with the archbishop’s “slippery slope” argument, saying that her proposal is only for people who are terminally ill and suffering at the end of their lives.
But Archbishop Welby told the <em>BBC</em> he believes legalising assisted suicide “opens the way to it broadening out, such that people who are not in that situation [of being terminally ill], asking for this, or feeling pressured to ask for it”.
It's a point that has been <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/churchs-response-to-assisted-suicide-bill-gets-punchier-as-cardinal-nichols-speaks-out/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">reiterated by Cardinal Vincent Nichols</mark></a>, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, who has urged Catholics to write to their MPs to express their opposition to assisted suicide. He has been joined by <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/bishop-egan-urges-catholics-to-mobilise-against-sinister-assisted-suicide-bill/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">other Catholic leaders in the UK speaking out</mark></a> against the Bill.
But, as the <em>BBC</em> notes, “it is the Church of England that also has the privilege of being the 'established Church' in England" and hence its bishops and archbishops "automatically get seats in the House of Lords”.
Welby and 25 other Church of England bishops and archbishops have seats in the House of Lords and can vote on legislation.
The <em>BBC</em> notes that "assisted dying", in addition to the issue itself and its related implications, has also been one of the main issues in prompting discussion about the presence of religious figures in the UK Parliament and thereby being able to influence the British democratic system.
Secular groups in the UK have long called for religion to be removed from the debate and even for senior bishops to lose their right to sit in the House of Lords where they can vote on such matters.
The last time the topic of assisted suicide was voted on at a CofE General Synod in 2022, only 7 per cent of the Church's national assembly said they supported a change in the law, the <em>BBC</em> reports. It adds that that contrasts with a much larger proportion of the general population appearing to be in favour of the law according to public polling.
“There will be people who look at that and say the Church is totally out of touch, that they totally disagree with us, and say they are going nowhere near a church, but we don't do things on the basis of opinion polls,” the Archbishop of Canterbury told the <em>BBC</em>.
The Bill is scheduled for a second reading in Parliament on Friday 29 November.
<a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/christian-churches-are-shamelessly-leaving-catholics-to-fight-alone-against-uks-assisted-suicide-bill/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><em><strong>RELATED: Christian churches are shamelessly leaving Catholics to fight alone against UK’s assisted suicide Bill</strong></em></mark></a>
<em>Photo: The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby (right), seated in the House of Lords chamber, talking to Archbishop Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York – who as another Lord Spiritual, is also an automatic member of the House of Lords – ahead of the State Opening of Parliament at the Palace of Westminster, London, England, 17 July 2024. (Photo by Aaron Chown - WPA Pool/Getty Images.)</em>
