On April 21, 2023, Il Riformista published a speech given by Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia in the context of a colloquium on the end of life. The prelate, while saying he is against assisted suicide, declared “but I understand that legal mediation [decriminalizing euthanasia in very specific cases] may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions in which we find ourselves.”
Words that quickly went viral, to the point that three days later the Academy for Life itself wanted to clarify its president’s thinking, saying that his statement, well read, would in fact be ” in full conformity with the Magisterium of the Church”, and that we would see there “reaffirmed a categorical ‘no’ to euthanasia”.
In an attempt to explain, the Academy for Life claims that a civil law that would both preserve the criminality of euthanasia while specifying the conditions under which such an act might not be punished, would be “possible” within the context of Catholic ethics. “It is fundamental that the legal decision states that the criminality of the act remains and is not repealed.” Which is the very principle of decriminalization.
This is how the law on abortion in France proceeded in 1976, and this crime is now considered a right to be enshrined in the Constitution. This is also how the Dutch government proceeded to introduce euthanasia in the early 1980s, and now children – of all ages – can or will soon be able to be euthanized.
Accepting decriminalization is not only against morality – with which the Academy seems to agree – but must always be fought, not only because of the violation of God’s law under the guise of law, but also because it is only a step towards full acceptance.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reiterated in a 2002 note that “those who are directly involved in legislative bodies have a specific obligation to oppose any law that proves to be an attempt against human life. For them, as for any Catholic, it is impossible to participate in public opinion campaigns in favor of such laws, and no one is permitted to support them with his vote.”
And the Roman document specifies that, “in this context, it must be added that the well-formed Christian conscience does not allow anyone to encourage by his vote the implementation of a political program or of a law in which the fundamental content of the faith and morals would be ousted by the presentation of propositions different from this content or opposed to it.”
There are other curiosities in Msgr. Paglia’s declaration: the prelate advances the opinion that “the intervention and the witness of the Church, insofar as she participates in the public, intellectual, political, and legal debate, are placed at the level of the culture and the dialogue between consciences.” A singular way of relativizing the doctrinal positions of the Church.
But nothing coming from the current president of the Academy for Life is surprising: in 2019, Msgr. Paglia contradicted the position of the Swiss episcopate asking priests not to assist patients who have knowingly and without retracting, opted for assisted suicide.
In August 2022, the same prelate finally declared to an Italian newspaper that the law decriminalizing abortion was “a foundation of social life” in the Peninsula, before backing down in bewilderment as he has on the question of euthanasia.
The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life has once again created controversy by defending the possibility of decriminalizing euthanasia, without however declaring himself to be in favor of this practice, personally.