Letters to the Editor: Restrictions for assisted suicide, once legalised, begin to look ‘arbitrary and cruel’

Assisted suicide

Sir – Fr Patrick Pullicino notes that “once started [assisted suicide] spreads quickly and it cannot be contained” (26 October). He says that one reason for this is that “assisted suicide quickly becomes an obligation”. This is surely correct. But there is another reason for the euthanasia “creep” that we have seen in countries such as Canada and Belgium. Euthanasia laws always begin with strict limits: only terminally ill people with a few months to live are allowed to be killed. Parliaments always justify passing such laws on the grounds that they will curtail intolerable suffering, and once one has accepted this justification of euthanasia as a good one, then any restriction of it to the terminally ill immediately begins to look both arbitrary and cruel. For example, if it is humane to prevent six months of suffering by killing, then why not seven months, or 20, or a decade? Once parliaments have accepted the justification for euthanasia in the first place, then the logic of such arguments is unanswerable, and so the time limits are widened and widened.

Peter Day-Milne, Sherborne, UK

Shroud of Turin

Sir – Cícero Moraes’s work on the Shroud of Turin, “Facial reconstruction expert uses 3D software to show Shroud of Turin did not cover Christ” (31 October), is based on a false premise. Mr Moraes assumes that the image was created using body-to-cloth contact. If this were the case the image would indeed be distorted, and the method would also involve the use of paint or stain to transfer the image to the cloth. However, there is no evidence of paint, stain, or any other substance on the Shroud. The image on the Shroud is also in 3D; no other image in the world on a two-dimensional surface contains three-dimensional information. Mr Moraes is a facial reconstruction expert; I have studied osteoarchaeology and facial reconstruction myself, and to apply these methods to the image on the Shroud is problematic. Other evidence, available online, suggests that at the moment of the creation of the image, the cloth was not in contact with the body; it is described as a scientifically explained miracle.

Giulia Khawaja, Andover, UK

Qualified faith

Sir – I write as a concerned head of Religious Education at a secondary school in London. The Catholic Education Service (CES) mandates that five per cent of curriculum time be allocated to RE, which for sixth-formers typically equates to one hour per week. While this time is valuable for supporting the spiritual, moral and intellectual development of our students, it currently lacks the added benefit of a formal qualification that could provide students with an accredited qualification (and perhaps UCAS points). In the past, some schools offered the Maryvale NOCN (National Open College Network) course, which provided students with a qualification in RE. This has not been available for some time, leaving a gap in provision. Without an examinable course, some students view Core RE as peripheral to their academic development, particularly when weighed against other subjects that directly contribute to their university applications. I urge the CES to work collaboratively with exam boards and diocesan RE teams to develop or reintroduce a suitable accredited qualification for sixth-form Core RE. Such a qualification would formally acknowledge students’ efforts, provide them with tangible academic benefits, and strengthen their commitment to Catholic values in a way that supports their broader aspirations. It would also give an opportunity to celebrate and elevate the distinctive ethos of our Catholic schools by providing students with meaningful opportunities to integrate their faith with an academic qualification. Elaine Henry, London, UK

Christmas morn

Sir – I read with appreciation your online editorial (“The true nature of Halloween, 31 October) and Flora Watkins’s article in the October edition on allowing children to enjoy the secular version of Halloween. I would, however, guard against falling into the tired assumption that Christian festivals like All Hallows (and, therefore, Halloween) necessarily ape and “sanitise” pagan festivities. For one thing, the Mexican “Day of the Dead” is less than a hundred years old and an “indigenisation” of the Catholic Hallowtide, not the other way around. Modern assumptions about the Irish festival of Samhain also appear to be just that. The distinguished historian Professor Ronald Hutton notes that there is no historical record of any religious character to Samhain at all prior to a dubious account made in the 17th century. All we know for sure is it marked the end of the harvest season and was the occasion for lavish tribal assemblies. Professor Hutton also casts doubt upon the common assumption that the date of Christmas was deliberately chosen to mimic and replace the old Sol Invictus celebrations. Cultures tend to choose the same dates to celebrate their festivities for similar reasons; the ancient Romans believed that the winter solstice occurred on 25 December. As the solstice marks the point at which the hours of daylight begin to lengthen (at least in the northern hemisphere), to them it was as sensible a date to celebrate the birth of the “Invincible Sun” as it was for Christians to celebrate that of the Sun of Righteousness.

Paul Nizinskyj, Alton, UK

This article appears in the November 2024 edition of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click HERE.

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