Caring, not killing

The Catholic Church in Scotland responded negatively to Liam McArthur’s final proposal in the Scottish Parliament for his member’s bill legalising euthanasia. Anthony Horan, director of the Catholic Parliamentary Office, said it is “frankly dangerous. It risks undermining the provision of palliative care, and undermining efforts to prevent suicide. It will make the most vulnerable people, including the elderly and disabled, feel like a burden and its safeguards will prove futile. The current law is the safeguard. We should be caring for people, not killing them.”

‘God always seeks us’

During his Angelus address last Sunday, Pope Francis said: “God is the Father and comes in search of us whenever we are lost. One who loves is concerned about the one who is missing, longs for who is absent, seeks who is lost, await who has gone astray. For he wants no one to be lost...Do we have nostalgia for those who are missing, who have drifted from Christian life?... In other words, do we truly miss those who are missing from our communities? Or are we comfortable among ourselves, calm and blissful in our groups, without compassion for those who are far away?”

Cooperation not competition

The UN is concerned about the decline in the quality of life in the world. “An enormous setback for human development progress,” warned the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its newly-released Human Development Index. Anne-Bénédicte Hoffner, deputy editor-in-chief of La Croix, wrote that: “It’s not good news that the burden is now weighing on even more countries. But the fact that it is shared can be an opportunity for awareness and joint action.”

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)