Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Declaration on Euthanasia is the Roman Catholic Church's official document on the topic of euthanasia, a statement that was issued as by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1980. [1] Catholic teaching purports that euthanasia is a "crime against life". [1]
The Catholic Church opposes active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide on the grounds that life is a gift from God and should not be prematurely shortened. However, the church allows dying people to refuse extraordinary treatments that would minimally prolong life without hope of recovery, [5] a form of passive euthanasia.
In the sixth century AD, suicide became a secular crime and began to be viewed as sinful. In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas denounced suicide as an act against God and as a sin for which one could not repent. In 1533, those who died by suicide while accused of a crime were denied a Christian burial. In 1562, all suicides were punished in this ...
The Roman Catholic Church condemns euthanasia and assisted suicide as morally wrong. As paragraph 2324 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "Intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder. It is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator".
The 1968 papal encyclical Humanae vitae is a reaffirmation of the Catholic Church's traditional view of marriage and marital relations, and a continued condemnation of artificial birth control. [120] The Church sees large families as a sign of God's blessing. "By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the ...
According to the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, suicide is objectively a sin which violates the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". [29] However, the gravity and culpability for that sin changes based on the circumstances surrounding that sin.
It is a comprehensive document setting out the teaching of the Catholic Church on the sanctity of human life and related issues including murder, abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment, reaffirming the Church's stances on these issues in a way generally considered consistent with previous church teachings.
The position of the Catholic Church has not changed and evolved little since the Old Testament ban. The last Roman pontiffs have all reaffirmed the ban on euthanasia. The Encyclical Evangelium vitae of Saint John Paul II, of March 25, 1995, is a clear and firm text: “euthanasia is therefore a crime that no human law can claim to legitimize.