Latest / The Catholic Current / Canadian Death Cult? (Amanda Achtman) 10/13/26

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Canadian Death Cult? (Amanda Achtman) 10/13/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert Matague.
0:04
The pro-abortion movement has done a very good job of
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using the language of ban, restrict, and limit, when really what we're trying
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to do is save lives. Right. I think we have to be really
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alert to, to the language game. Regardless of what the
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outcome is, we need to work for the day when people are not
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voting on whether or not a person has the right to life.
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Reminds me of the old joke that democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting
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on what's on the menu for lunch.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTaggart of the Society of Jesus,
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your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
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the world to Christ. You're listening to us from a station of the Cross Studios,
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fullness of truth with clarity and charity. As always, let's start
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with prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God,
0:55
through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy
0:58
Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment,
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that we might hear your voice and obey your command. In the name of the
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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, friends, you know that I've
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worked in medical ethics for many years. I try to follow
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what's going on in, in that part of the world,
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and I have seen some alarming trends over the years, but none more so
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alarming than what's taking place in Canada, the place
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of, you know, A lot of snow and some horrifying euphemisms.
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We're gonna talk about MAID, M-A-I-D, medical assistance
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in dying, which is what we used to call euthanasia.
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It's become prevalent, it's become prominent, and we
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need to understand it so we can figure out not only what's going on,
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a lot of our listeners are Canadian, but also to give us
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some forewarning about what might be coming here next. My guest
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is an adjunct professor of bioethics at the St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry,
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in Rochester, New York, and she is a distinguished author
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as well. Amanda Ackman, welcome to The Catholic
2:03
Current. Thank you. Amanda, Philison,
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medical assistance in dying— it's—
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I have a friend who recently visited in Toronto, and he
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said there are advertisements everywhere. There are people speaking
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rather enthusiastically about it.
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Is medical assistance in dying something that's promising to be safe,
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legal, and rare? Is it what all the cool kids are doing these days?
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Well, Canada legalized euthanasia, medical assistance
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in dying, MAiD. We have all these different terms for it. 10 years ago,
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almost 10 years ago exactly. And it was legalized because
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of a court decision that actually determined
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that not allowing doctors to take their patients' lives
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was a violation of— get this— the right to
2:50
life. How could that be? Yes. How could that be?
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Well, if someone cannot ask at the moment of their choosing
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to have their life ended, they might take their life sooner
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than they would have wanted to. And so, by not leaving the option of
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having a doctor do it at a moment of one's own choosing,
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it was actually argued that this was undermining
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of the right to life, liberty, and the security of the person.
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So, this is the beginning of the utter obfuscation of
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our foundational rights, the right to life,
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and the freedom and benefits to
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patients that we might expect to be part of the
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healthcare system. So the court made this decision and gave
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Parliament a deadline to enact a law that would
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be commensurate with this new unanimous
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Supreme Court judgment. And so Parliament created
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a law, and in 2016, it became possible
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for those with a grievous and irremediable medical condition
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to have a doctor or nurse end their life. But this was not some positive
4:02
right that was granted. Rather, it was legalized by
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means of creating an exception to the Criminal
4:09
Code offense of homicide. Now, why I mention this right now
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is because this law, a euthanasia law, is,
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by the admission of those devising it, about protecting medical
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practitioners from prosecution. A doctor or
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nurse practitioner who ends a patient's life will not be prosecuted
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for homicide if they follow the rules for MAiD.
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And so that is the first thing that I want to draw out because we
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have all of these ideas about euthanasia, about pain and relief of
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suffering. Ultimately, this started in the courts and
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this started with then a criminal code exception for
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doctors to be exempt from criminal prosecution
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for ending their patients' lives. Now, about the
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language. I've used the term MAID, medical assistance in dying,
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euthanasia. Also familiar to this discussion
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is the term assisted suicide. Part of the reason I deliberately vary
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my language is because if I were to only use one
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or the other term, it might not register what I'm speaking about. This is actually
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part of the sowing of moral confusion. However, I would also like
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to stress, particularly particularly to American listeners, the distinctions
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between these terms, because they do actually have a technical
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difference. And this is the difference. Medical assistance
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in dying was created as an umbrella term to encompass
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both forms, both euthanasia and assisted suicide.
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What's the difference? Euthanasia is the direct provision
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of a lethal injection by That doctor or nurse
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practitioner taking the patient's life and ending it within
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probably 15 minutes. Assisted suicide, by contrast,
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requires the self-administration by the patient.
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Now, in Canada, you have the option, one or the other.
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But interestingly, each year we have seen
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extremely few persons opt for
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assisted suicide, and almost everyone opt
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for the direct administration of the lethal injection by a medical practitioner.
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So much so is this the case that for the last year for which
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we have federal data, the Health Canada report
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indicates that in 2024,
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100% of the 16,499
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Canadians who died by MAiD died by the direct
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doctor or nurse practitioner administered lethal injection.
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Not a single one chose to do it themselves.
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Whereas in America, the states, all of the states that
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have assisted suicide, restrict it to this
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assisted suicide-specific self-administration
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requirement. And so the numbers are much lower. And if Americans
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are wondering what's up with Canada, why are the numbers off the charts,
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this is the single biggest differentiator. We have
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extremely similar cultures. Don't think it can't happen to
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you. What I like to stress to Americans is you are one lawsuit
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away from going from assisted suicide to this
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direct euthanasia. As soon as one person sues
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and says, I am unable to self-administer, I need a
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doctor to do it for me, it is against my rights of equality not
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to be able to have this directly provided. And that is what would open
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the floodgates to Canada-like euthanasia regime
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in the US. And so, I'm warning pro-lifers to become
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vigilant about how euthanasia always gets
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expanded on the grounds of equality and a distorted
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understanding about what is good and reasonable. Because if euthanasia
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becomes regarded as a reasonable and compassionate means to
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alleviate suffering by ending the life of the one who suffers,
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then why would you not expand it further? Why wouldn't you let more and more
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people avail themselves of it? So fundamentally, it is a question
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of the good. Is this a good way to go,
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or is it not? And what we have seen in
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Canada is that exact rationale has led to
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the expansion of euthanasia on the grounds of equality to wider
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and wider demographics. Some people use the term slippery slope.
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I prefer not to because it's not always— it can be a
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bit of a cliché or a bit of a shorthand for thinking, whereas I find
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with audiences they follow along more carefully if I say euthanasia
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cannot remain limited but must be expanded on the grounds of equality,
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because then people understand, ah, it's on the basis of equality.
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We can't skip the argument.
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We have to explain and show the steps. And so that's exactly what happened in
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Canada. Because it was argued that surely there are people who
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suffer, if not perhaps more, with a chronic illness, a disability,
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or a neurological condition than some who live a long life and die
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a natural death. There are people who suffer more whose deaths
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are not at all reasonably foreseeable or imminent.
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And so the thought was, well, they too should be able to avail themselves
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of this option. And so in 2021, euthanasia was expanded
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on the basis of disability. Immediately,
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and the Senate would not even pass that law unless it was also expanded
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on the basis of mental illness as a sole underlying condition.
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And we can come back to this point later. There's a lot of nuance to
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it. It hasn't been implemented yet in Canada, but it is notable that
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right amidst the COVID pandemic, a euthanasia
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expansion on the basis of disability and mental illness was passed by
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our Parliament Um, and so we, we immediately began,
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uh, allowing euthanasia for people with disabilities whose deaths
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were not imminent on the basis of equality. But the mental illness piece
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was, uh, stalled. And so far, thank God, to date
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has been delayed, but remains a big subject in our
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public discourse. This, this is absolutely alarming to me. You know, when I started teaching
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medical ethics, I said the 2 anchors of medical
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ethics are the beginning of life and the end of life. And if you get
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those 2 issues right, nearly everything else falls into
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place. And if you get those things wrong,
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then nothing else is really going to work. And whenever we'd evaluate
10:34
a medical issue, uh, or excuse me, a moral issue, I'd say, is this
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helping us to build a moral house in which we would want to
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live? And I— what we're seeing now in Canada is really
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a kind of a surrender to, to the cult
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of death. And that's appalling. And I think every person
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of goodwill has to sound the alarm, and Christians in particular have a
11:00
profound obligation. Friends, we come back and continue our conversation
11:04
with Amanda Ackman. She's an adjunct professor of bioethics at St.
11:07
Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry in Rochester, New York. We're talking
11:11
about the cult of euthanasia, the medical assistance in dying
11:15
in Canada. Is it coming to the United States next?
11:18
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our Catholic faith. We're talking about medical assistance in dying taking
12:57
place in Canada. My guest is Amanda Ackman,
13:01
an adjunct professor of bioethics at St. Bernard's School of Theology
13:06
and Ministry in Rochester, New York. Amanda, something that you said in the last
13:10
segment really caught my ear, that this movement
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towards— would you call it a franchise mandate
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permission for, for euthanasia, medical assistance
13:22
in dying, etc.— that can't be contained.
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Once you've surrendered the principle of the dignity
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of human life from conception to natural death,
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once you've surrendered that intuitively obvious principle.
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Any line that you draw is merely a
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line in the sand. It's arbitrary,
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and there's no principled reason to maintain
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that line. Do you think that's, that, that's where we are, that the
13:54
dam has simply burst and now it's only a matter of time before the floodwaters
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reach us? To some extent, it fundamentally comes
14:03
down to confusion about what is good and how we obtain goods
14:07
for ourselves. I remember I remember the summer of 2016
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when the Canadian government was
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legalizing euthanasia. And at that time, I was actually
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in Poland doing a master's degree in John Paul II.
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And one of the texts that I studied was
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St. Augustine's book on the free choice of the will. And I
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was very taken that he, so early on,
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had this discussion of suicide in which he argued
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that people who want to— people who are considering suicide
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don't actually desire death. They don't desire not to be anymore.
14:45
They actually desire goods. And I became kind of obsessed
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with testing this against the Supreme Court cases in Canada.
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And I read the Supreme Court cases, and they mostly involved over
14:57
the years women with ALS who were in fact desiring
15:02
certain goods like comfort, privacy,
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dignity, autonomy. They weren't desiring,
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as Augustine knew, not to exist anymore. And so
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euthanasia and campaigning for it became a way to—
15:17
misguided search for the goods that were
15:20
sought. And I mention this because every day I engage seniors,
15:24
especially across Canada, but increasingly internationally.
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And even within Catholic churches, if I'm in British Columbia or
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if I'm in Ontario, Within a Catholic church, I can say, raise your hand if
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you know someone who has died by MAiD or who is thinking of it.
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And in some parishes, 80% of hands go up.
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This is shocking. I do not think any American would have this experience,
15:47
but on Vancouver Island and in parts of
15:50
Ontario and Quebec, it is this widespread because 1 in 20
15:54
deaths is the result of a doctor or nurse ending a
15:58
patient's life, and most often in their own home. The doctor will go.
16:01
It is one of the few things that doctors are making house calls for is
16:05
to end the patient's life. But what is going
16:09
on here in terms of the appeal? We can speak about it in
16:13
this sinister and nefarious way, and there, to be sure, are elements of
16:16
that. But it is also so appealing
16:20
in this misguided way to people. And I want to discuss some of that.
16:25
I want to get to the heart of the cry of the heart and the
16:29
kinds of suffering by people's own admission that are leading
16:32
to this, to this misguided choice that doesn't actually
16:36
secure the goods a person seeks. Okay. The number one kind
16:40
of suffering, according to people's own admission— and this is a great
16:44
thing that the federal government does. It's about the only compliment I have
16:47
to pay right now to the government in this domain. But there is an excellent
16:52
annual report published by the government, and some states
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do this as well, indicating the kinds of suffering by people's
16:59
own admission leading them to request euthanasia. Interesting.
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And interestingly, notably, the number one kind
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of suffering— vastly number one kind of suffering leading people
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to request euthanasia— is an inability to engage in meaningful
17:15
life activities. Okay, inability to engage in meaningful life
17:19
activities. Now, the second highest is an inability to perform the daily
17:23
activities of personal care. And I do hear this often: if I have
17:27
to be in a nursing home, if I can't go to the washroom by myself,
17:30
if I have to a wheelchair, I would rather be dead.
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Now, many people who say this and who feel this insecurity and
17:38
are kind of projecting this insecurity into their
17:42
future probably don't understand how utterly
17:46
dehumanizing that view is of persons with disabilities
17:50
who may live with that reality throughout their life and who
17:53
may live a very meaningful life in the face
17:57
of those certain challenges and constraints. Once we imply
18:00
that being dependent is undignified,
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then you degrade and dehumanize anyone in dependency.
18:07
And it also makes each of us more precarious because all
18:11
of us will eventually become dependent. So all of this is
18:14
contributing to really aggravating and exacerbating a fear of death,
18:18
a fear of suffering, a fear of dementia, a fear of illness.
18:22
And that's why this concerns everyone. Some people would say, oh, you don't want euthanasia,
18:26
just don't go for it.
18:29
Social toll. And that's one thing I would especially stress when I
18:32
speak to seniors every day. I can detect, and they also
18:36
reveal to me, that simply fitting the criteria is
18:40
itself demoralizing. Okay, even if you don't— say more
18:43
about that, please. Yeah, being told that you fit already
18:47
the criteria for a state-sponsored suicide is demoralizing.
18:52
What kind of expectation of care and treatment can you receive
18:56
if you know that you're just one request away from having a
19:00
doctor give up on you in this way. And so the fact of having
19:04
criteria at all is the problem. People think that having criteria
19:08
is a safeguard. No, having criteria itself is
19:12
the problem because it sends a social message that there's a category
19:16
of human beings who could just no longer be here. And that
19:20
is deeply, deeply wounding to the
19:24
self-esteem of the elderly, of persons with disabilities, of people
19:27
living with chronic illnesses, of people managing neurological
19:32
conditions. The list goes on and on and on. And I would say to all
19:35
of us, because as members of the disability community like to say, we are
19:39
all TABs, temporarily able-bodied. I normally
19:43
avoid acronyms, but I think that's a nice one. Temporarily able-bodied.
19:47
Yeah, so we need to see a greater solidarity And
19:51
that we never want to fit the criteria that
19:55
tells us we qualify for this premature end
19:59
to our life, because that is the exact opposite of love. This is why I
20:03
insist that euthanasia is the literal opposite of
20:07
love. Why? Because love says, it's good you exist.
20:10
I want you to be. You belong in the world. You have a place among
20:13
us. Euthanasia is the exact opposite. It says, maybe you
20:17
would be better off dead. Maybe it's not so good for you to be here.
20:21
Maybe we don't have room for you anymore. And so what we see with
20:25
euthanasia is very deep, though. I will say that having worked on this
20:29
issue for the past 10 years in different capacities, from working with a member of
20:32
parliament to working with physicians to working in the
20:36
culture at large, many, many different roles and capacities,
20:40
I'm starting to detect the cry of the heart going on
20:44
here. And I'm realizing that For example, if I'm speaking in the
20:48
US, the questions are, well, what about religious exemptions for
20:51
healthcare institutions? Or what about the economic savings?
20:56
Or what about the insurance companies? Those are the usual questions I get. They're at
21:00
the level of policy. And that's understandable. That's where we were 10 years ago,
21:04
15 years ago. In Canada, when I speak,
21:07
the questions are different. The questions I get, for example,
21:11
in a parish are, Well, what if I have no one? It's a very different
21:15
question to answer. Yeah, sure. And so you see, I've spent
21:19
time on this topic, but the questions that arise that
21:23
are of the order of the cry of the heart— who will be with me?
21:27
What if I have no one? I, I was giving a talk to some,
21:30
uh, elderly, uh, women actually at a— it
21:35
was actually, yeah, um, in the States. And I, I asked,
21:39
uh, these women, what do you want to communicate by your
21:44
death. And one of the women there immediately said that my kids didn't
21:47
visit enough. This was someone who was sympathetic to the idea of
21:51
assisted suicide and almost wanted by her death, because I said, your death will send
21:54
a message. And she was basically kind of resentful that her family
21:58
was far away and not coming as often as she would like.
22:02
And so there's a deep woundedness. There's a deep insecurity.
22:06
There's, there's a pro-euthanasia ad produced by our
22:10
equivalent of Compassion and Choices. The euthanasia lobby group in Canada is
22:13
called Dying With Dignity. And they put out this ad, which they thought
22:17
made their case, but I think exposes a lot of the failings, where this woman
22:21
says she's choosing her choiceful death date,
22:24
and shows how her calendar was empty until she scheduled
22:29
her death, and everyone came and gathered around. What we, as Catholics
22:33
and pro-lifers, have to face up to is the challenge presented
22:38
by euthanasia of a presence. The presence
22:41
is a sham. The presence is the presence of one who kills.
22:45
It's not very accompanying. It's not very demanding to
22:49
be at someone's bedside and then know that they will no longer be an
22:54
issue for you 15 minutes later. But I hate
22:57
to say it, what the request for euthanasia kind of betrays
23:01
is this insecurity of like, will I have anyone with
23:05
me? And one of the ways to guarantee that
23:09
you will not be alone at the moment of your death is by having a
23:13
euthanasia provider with you. That might sound shocking, but it is a
23:17
real incentive. When people are living long lives and
23:21
are extremely lonely, the presence,
23:25
the accompaniment of a euthanasia provider, not only at the
23:29
moment of doing it— think about the assessments, think about the speed
23:34
of attention that a person gets once they say they're opting for this and they're
23:37
not, and they're going to get out of line for healthcare and
23:41
treatment and everything that's much more expensive and cumbersome and
23:45
all of that. But the red carpet is rolled out for the euthanasia requests.
23:48
And so, you get very prompt attention.
23:51
That we have to contend with. How are we going to be
23:55
competitive as the church and say, we have something so
24:00
much more beautiful, noble, true, and good, adequate to the human heart,
24:03
and what you actually deserve, a presence that stays
24:07
with you, a presence that loves you well until the
24:11
end, rather than this sham accompaniment
24:15
of a euthanasia doctor. I mention all of this because
24:18
it's also the big difference between the self-administration versus
24:22
the really— the way that— the highly engaged
24:26
way that a doctor is doing this act. And so it's
24:31
really, really important. Amanda, we're coming up on a break here, so I'm going to
24:34
ask you to hold that thought as we carry it over into the next segment.
24:37
And one of the things that really struck me in what you're talking about
24:41
is that this represents a complete catastrophic failure
24:46
of community, that we don't value
24:49
one another enough to be with one another in our
24:53
vulnerabilities and our needs. And this is a failure then at being
24:57
human. Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Amanda
25:01
Ackman. We're talking about medical assistance in dying in
25:04
Canada. And how I think this euthanasia cult
25:09
could be spreading to the United States as well. After the broadcast
25:13
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the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. Hey friends,
26:36
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26:41
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Support us, please, at stationofthecross.com. My guest today
26:52
is Amanda Actman. She serves as adjunct professor of bioethics
26:56
at St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry in Rochester, New York.
27:00
Amanda, one of the things that I would talk to newly
27:04
married couples about when they're talking about having kids, and I said, in addition
27:07
to the faith, one of the best gifts you can give your children is
27:11
to say to them and prove to them, you are
27:14
worth my time. This conversation about end-of-life
27:18
issues makes me believe now that this is something that, that everybody
27:23
needs. Whether you're at the end of life or struggling with an illness
27:27
or depression or just a difficult chapter in life, you need to have people
27:32
show up and say, you are worth my time. And for
27:36
a lot of different reasons, we seem to be unwilling to say that to
27:40
each other. I want to shift the conversation a
27:43
little bit. When I started teaching medical ethics, I said that our
27:47
economic system is kind of a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme,
27:51
the illusion of free stuff for everyone to infinity, as long
27:55
as you feed in more workers to pay
27:59
for it all. And we have been aborting and contracepting
28:02
future workers, future payers, into the system for a long time.
28:06
We're becoming top-heavy with age. And I said there's going to
28:10
be a terrible financial incentive to,
28:14
um, not only make it permissible for
28:18
the elderly to die, but eventually mandatory
28:23
to die. So the right to die eventually becomes the
28:26
duty to die. Can you begin to talk about the
28:30
financial roots of the euthanasia movement and how that too can become expansive?
28:35
Yes, I will say that euthanasia really often represents
28:39
a choiceless choice because of patients feeling like
28:43
they have no other options. Sometimes that's on a very personal financial
28:48
level. It gets very expensive to live a very long
28:51
life, and people are really financially insecure, and it can be very
28:55
embarrassing to basically outlive your economic resources
28:59
that you expected would carry you. And then don't. And so
29:03
part of covering that embarrassment is saying, well,
29:07
I've lived a completed life, I'm out. I think
29:11
that's very important to attend to, the kind of shame of simply not
29:15
having enough or really feeling squeezed. And then
29:19
who will care for me at the personal and individual
29:22
and familial level? There's a whole set of economic incentives that deserve
29:26
attention. I remember before euthanasia was even legalized,
29:30
I went to one of these Dying With Dignity town halls.
29:33
I was definitely the youngest person there. I like to say I drank their
29:37
coffee but not their Kool-Aid at this meeting. Good for you. I met
29:40
this woman there who was very enthusiastic
29:44
about euthanasia being legalized, and I was speaking to her one-to-one,
29:49
and she said to me very transparently, I think
29:53
my children would like my money, and I will want to I want
29:56
to decide what to do with it and when. And she basically said,
30:00
I want to leave a legacy. I want to leave them
30:04
money rather than wasting away. And I think
30:08
that that's an example of saying the quiet part out
30:12
loud and being very explicit. Many people feel that
30:16
they will be honored and appreciated for whatever
30:21
they leave behind apart from themselves.
30:24
And this dehumanizing language of wasting away,
30:29
especially with dementia or something like this,
30:33
we really have to attend to that fear and insecurity and
30:37
to the precariousness of life when undergoing these
30:41
conditions. At the national level, at the government level,
30:45
this is not just a kind of fearmongering speculation.
30:49
This is a document that any of your listeners could look up.
30:52
Cost Savings Estimate for Bill C-9.
30:56
The Parliamentary Budget Officer produced a document
31:00
calculating, tabulating the projected cost savings
31:04
of expanding euthanasia to those whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable,
31:09
as in the disabled. So it's not just— yeah,
31:13
it is a fact that governments are calculating
31:17
the savings of having them people who are the most
31:21
expensive at end of life voluntarily of their own choosing opt
31:25
for euthanasia. But of course, it's not— it's a choiceless choice.
31:29
There's a real lack of options when, for example,
31:32
in many parts of Canada, people don't even have a family doctor.
31:36
How can we talk about this kind of— how
31:40
can we talk about this when people don't even have access to basic, basic,
31:44
basic healthcare, that they don't have anyone, let alone specialists?
31:48
We have so many stories coming out of Canadians,
31:52
many who count their blessing of being a dual citizen, who come to the
31:56
States for healthcare. And there are these stories
31:59
every few weeks in the media of people leaving Canada. And our
32:04
healthcare system is usually the basis for a lot of pride and patriotism
32:08
among Canadians. But as is often said, access to a waitlist is not access
32:12
to healthcare. And being offered MAiD is not
32:16
access to treatment. It's not an offer of care or treatment
32:19
either. So, we are seeing such a lowering of standards. And this
32:23
is another reason why euthanasia affects absolutely everyone, and becomes
32:27
corrosive for the system across the board. Some would say, if you
32:30
do not want euthanasia, just do not ask for it. What concern is it to
32:34
you? Well, if everyone else with your particular condition— take,
32:37
for example, ALS. Many people with ALS are vulnerable
32:41
to, and tempted to euthanasia. Well,
32:45
if If the predominant view is
32:48
that ALS is a reasonable condition for which to
32:52
seek an end to your life, how does that make someone feel who
32:57
receives this diagnosis but doesn't want euthanasia?
33:00
You can see how it puts that pressure, and it creates such a realm
33:04
of unfreedom in people who would not wish to go
33:08
that route. But once it becomes so mainstream, once it becomes—
33:12
and so I say, I don't even hesitate to say it to the seniors
33:15
to whom I speak. Don't become a MAiD statistic.
33:19
You might think that the experiences
33:22
of your own life or of your own friends and family are so
33:26
extenuating. But look at the hands that go up when I ask how many
33:30
people know someone dying by MAiD. Like, I hate— it's hard
33:35
to say this, and some people would say, well, who are you to pronounce
33:39
this? But when we're suffering, we have a tendency of closing in
33:43
on ourselves. Our horizon narrows, and we become self-pitying
33:48
and self-absorbed. And I say we because I'm a human being who suffers,
33:52
who is prone and tempted to all of this as well. And we need someone
33:56
else in those moments to shake us out of it and to say, yes,
33:59
your suffering is in a certain sense unique, but it's also not
34:03
so unique. And that's part of the wonderful ability
34:07
that we have to increase our identification with Christ. If I can just share a
34:11
little bit about how I speak to Catholics, on this. Please do. It's such a
34:15
tremendous occasion to deepen in identification
34:19
with Christ as people age, as people suffer. I mentioned
34:23
to you about how the number one kind of suffering, by people's own admission,
34:27
is an inability to engage in meaningful activities.
34:30
When I'm speaking in a parish, I share sometimes
34:34
with parishioners that I spend a lot of time, naturally,
34:38
praying about this topic before the Blessed Sacrament.
34:42
Looking at the tabernacle and praying before the Blessed Sacrament,
34:45
I have often asked, Jesus, what kind of meaningful activities
34:50
are you up to in there? What's he doing in the tabernacle?
34:53
Actually, I was informed of a beautiful book by
34:57
Saint Manuel, who is known as the Bishop of the Abandoned Tabernacle.
35:02
Beautiful reflections where he basically spends his time contemplating
35:07
what Jesus is doing, thinking, feeling in
35:11
the tabernacle. And how do we know? Because the Gospels are
35:14
the revealer of the activities of Christ in the tabernacle.
35:18
Beautiful reflections by St. Manuel. So I
35:22
think as people mature in their faith,
35:26
as Catholics age, the capacity for this deepening identification
35:31
with Christ, whereby we realize
35:35
that whatever we suffer, whatever we face,
35:39
however small we become, however weak, dependent, fragile,
35:43
frail, even forgotten and ignored
35:46
we may become, we will never become more weak,
35:51
hidden, unspoken, or even ignored than Christ makes
35:56
himself for us in the Blessed Sacrament. Amen. I think that
36:00
is tremendously important to find the presence of Christ
36:04
in the suffering and also to reflect the
36:09
risen and victorious Christ to those who are suffering.
36:14
My late, great mentor, Dr. Paul Weiss, talked about the
36:18
misunderstanding of pity and compassion. Pity at
36:22
its worst is, isn't it awful that you're you?
36:25
I'm sure glad that I'm not you. Whereas compassion,
36:30
compassio, to suffer with, means an insistence
36:34
that you have an identity a dignity, and a destiny beyond
36:38
this present darkness. And that I'm
36:43
going to walk with you. I'm going to get you out of the trench and
36:46
walk with you because we're all pilgrims on
36:50
the road. We're all in need of healing,
36:53
and we're all in this together. And I think one of the really wicked
36:57
things about medical assistance in dying is it further isolates
37:02
the individual. We've all decided your life isn't worth living.
37:06
Let us put you out of our misery. And I
37:10
think that's monstrous. Amanda, we've just got a couple minutes left.
37:14
Can you give us some numbers? I've seen some statistics I haven't
37:18
seen. For example, I saw a statistic said per capita,
37:22
you're more likely to die from medical assistance in dying than
37:26
Canada, than you are to die from firearm homicide
37:31
in the United States. Can you give us some numbers, please? Yes,
37:34
I think I've seen that one. And so far over the past decade,
37:38
we know that more than 100,000 Canadians have died by a
37:42
doctor or nurse practitioner taking life in a hospital,
37:46
home, or even in national parks, which our government advertises
37:49
as an option. What? Uh, yeah, yeah,
37:53
I did not know that. Yeah, it's, it's really sad.
37:57
And, um, it has gone from really exceptional
38:01
to quite routine, to the point that
38:04
I have a Google alert on MAiD. And quite
38:08
often what comes up regularly are obituaries that mention
38:13
that the person has died by MAiD. It's very frequently put in an obituary,
38:17
the mention that that was how a person died. I think partly to try and,
38:22
I don't know, I don't really know what the rationale is. I'll have
38:25
to ponder that a bit more deeply, but it has become a form of advertising.
38:29
Euthanasia program for free through obituaries.
38:32
So we have to attend to the way in which this is
38:35
completely sweeping our culture, and we have to present
38:39
a positive alternative vision through antidotes. It's not
38:43
enough to simply oppose, but as I heard in some of the preamble for this
38:47
program, what are we saying yes to? The Saskatchewan bishops, 8 years after
38:51
saying no and kind of fighting this, said, ah, we haven't been
38:55
saying yes to accompaniment, palliative care,
38:58
dignity therapy, all of these yeses that
39:01
we need. Because as Cardinal Ratzinger put it, Pope Benedict,
39:05
he said, the fundamental tenor of faith is affirmatory.
39:09
Faith lives on affirmation. And this yes to life and concurring that
39:13
creation is good, that human beings are good, is what we need to
39:17
do. So, a lot of what I'm doing through my project, Dying to
39:21
Meet You, is is a project of cultural renewal to humanize the culture around
39:25
suffering, death, meaning, and hope. And I produce short vignettes
39:29
of people's stories that give voice to those who are the
39:33
most affected and the least represented in public discourse about euthanasia.
39:37
And these spokespersons are tremendous. Amanda, we're almost
39:41
out of time, but I promise you I want to have you on the air
39:44
again soon. This is tremendously important. And I do want
39:48
to explore more at your program, Dying to Meet You. Amanda Ackman,
39:51
thank you for a fascinating conversation. God bless your very good work,
39:54
and I look forward to next time. Thanks. God bless. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague,
39:59
your host every day of The Catholic Herald. It's a Timely Tuesday. You know what
40:02
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41:01
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41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host of The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:28
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross studios,
41:30
your local radio station and the iCatholic Radio mobile app,
41:33
and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:37
Here it is, a Timely Tuesday, the last segment. You know what that means— you
41:41
and me sharing timely thoughts, talking about what we, we've discussed today.
41:45
We're talking about the Canadian death cult, and my guest was Amanda
41:48
Actman. You know, I taught medical ethics for many years. I'm still
41:52
on the National Ethics Committee of the Catholic Medical Association. And after I'd
41:56
been teaching medical ethics for several years, I would begin the semester with a lecture
41:59
of what has changed from when I first started teaching
42:02
medical ethics to where I am now, and what do I make of the changes.
42:06
And I started to come to the conclusion that what's changed is that more
42:09
and more of what I have to say about medical ethics has
42:13
to do with demography and finances and law rather
42:18
than— excuse me— breakthroughs in science. So what
42:22
do I mean by that? Well, we, in brief, We have an
42:26
economy based on a pyramid scheme, a Ponzi scheme, which goes
42:29
like this: hey, if you pay in money now,
42:33
eventually all the people who come in behind you
42:37
who pay in, you'll get some of their money too.
42:41
I mean, that's how we operate the economy, it's how we operate Social Security,
42:45
and like every pyramid scheme, it demands,
42:49
it requires future generations,
42:53
larger and larger cohorts of people coming
42:57
in to pay for eventually, uh, lesser and
43:01
lesser payoff on a longer and longer time frame. So inevitably
43:05
it breaks down. So one of the ways to make this pyramid
43:09
scheme break down is to abort and contracept out of
43:13
existence all the future generations that are supposed to be
43:18
paying for the generations that are ahead. And so demographically,
43:21
you're— the number is supposed to play out like a pyramid. You have a few
43:24
older people on top and a broad base of younger people coming
43:28
in, and that base is ever expanding. Well, that's not what
43:32
is happening. So for a lot of different reasons, you have a shrinking
43:36
middle class, and that's not by accident. That's by design. Another topic
43:41
for another time. And you've got people living longer because of medicine, etc.
43:45
So who's going to pay? For all that free
43:49
stuff that we're supposed to give to old people as, you know,
43:52
entitlements. So I predicted, and this is going back over 15
43:56
years, eventually there would be tremendous
44:00
economic pressure to promote euthanasia among
44:04
the chronically ill and the elderly because they're very
44:09
expensive. And at first there's going
44:12
to be, well, for the rare hard exceptional
44:17
cases, euthanasia will be okay.
44:21
And then it would be a variation of shut up, he explained, and there
44:25
would be the right for euthanasia.
44:29
And then eventually there would be the duty to
44:33
die. And I'd always ask my students whenever we'd look at
44:37
a moral proposition, does this contribute to helping us build a moral
44:41
house in which we would want to live. And I don't want
44:44
to live in a moral house where somebody else gets to decide
44:48
whether or not my life is worth living.
44:53
I don't want to live in a moral house where someone else can decide that
44:57
I have a duty to die. I also made it clear in medical
45:01
ethics that the 2 decisive genres,
45:05
if you will, of medical moral issues are end-of-life
45:09
issues and beginning of life issues. And if you get
45:12
those right, nearly everything falls
45:16
into place. And if you get it wrong, nothing works.
45:20
And beginning of life issues are really the
45:24
decisive ones because you either see life
45:28
as a gift from God, and parents have
45:32
the privilege of sharing in the creative powers of God,
45:36
by invoking his powers of creation through the
45:40
marital embrace, or it's,
45:43
it's just a project and people are products
45:47
subject to quality control. And if you give
45:50
yourself license to tinker with beginning
45:55
of life issues, eventually you'll give yourself
45:59
license to tinker with end of life issues, and you will also
46:03
screw the economy such that you will find yourself under huge
46:07
pressure to eventually euthanize the elderly and the chronically
46:11
ill. So a very bright student of mine who
46:15
is now a medical doctor, she connected all
46:20
the dots before about anybody else. And she went to her theology
46:24
professor. She wanted the 90-minute class to make
46:28
a presentation in theology class based on what she concluded
46:32
from my medical ethics class. And the professor called me and
46:35
said, this is what she wants to do. She said she can start
46:40
from one end of the chalkboard and by 90 minutes be at
46:43
the other end of the chalkboard and make the case that if you're willing to
46:47
use contraception and tolerate abortion, or even
46:51
just willingness to use contraception, inevitably you give
46:55
yourself permission to smother grandma with a pillow. And I
46:58
said, well, number one, that's true, and number two,
47:01
she's smart enough to make that presentation.
47:05
And she said that— the theology professor said, well, I agree with you,
47:08
but you know, her classmates will want to kill her. And I said,
47:11
well, she's got the moral and physical courage that I
47:15
think she can stand up to it. And by golly, she did it. And while
47:19
her classmates didn't like it, they couldn't argue against
47:24
it. So I would say this cult of euthanasia that we're in now,
47:28
where we're telling older people they have the duty
47:32
to die, where we're euthanizing toddlers
47:37
and we're offering euthanasia to 12-year-olds because
47:41
reasons, we're offering to euthanize
47:45
people who are depressed, all that is traced
47:49
back, I believe, to the beginning of life issues,
47:52
contraception and abortion in particular,
47:55
because we don't see life as a gift
48:00
and we don't see other persons as a gift from God.
48:04
We see life as a burden to be managed
48:08
by trying to max our pleasures and our
48:12
inconveniences and our consumptions.
48:16
And other people are only resources,
48:21
opportunities for pleasure, or they are impediments or
48:25
burdens. And if we're going to stop the
48:29
euthanasia cult, we've got to go back
48:32
to the beginning and admit that we were wrong about
48:36
contraception and abortion. And if that happens
48:40
in my lifetime, I know that the triumph of the Immaculate Heart
48:44
will have begun because we have nearly made a sacrament
48:49
out of contraception, and abortion is
48:53
the love that dare not speak its name even among Catholics.
48:57
Too many Catholics still are
49:01
willing to tolerate abortion as a kind of
49:04
backup contraception. This is the
49:08
world we live in, make no mistake,
49:12
and we shall reap what we have planted.
49:17
So let's tell the truth, let's repent,
49:20
and let's reorder our lives accordingly. Let's admit
49:25
that human life is a gift from God, that God
49:29
is the author of life, and God is the
49:32
moral lawgiver for how life is to be lived,
49:37
and then let's act accordingly. And guess what? It turns out
49:41
revelation and natural law and
49:45
science, or as the cool kids now call it, the science,
49:49
are in fact in harmony, which always boggled my students.
49:53
And I said, yeah, almost as if there was an intelligent
49:56
design behind all of it. I'm Jesuit Father
50:00
Robert McTeague, your host every day of The Catholic Current. Join us tomorrow for another
50:03
episode of The Catholic Current. We have great guests, great conversation, because that's
50:08
how we roll here every day at the Catholic Current and the Station of the
50:11
Cross, where we strive to be so much more than merely relevant.
50:16
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources
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50:38
God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace, and please do
50:42
pray for me, for I am a sinner.