Euthanasia: The despair of our times
In recent days, the news that the Veneto region in Italy has passed a law aimed at regulating assisted suicide at the regional level has made headlines.
'Right-wing' politicians in favour of euthanasia
Veneto is the fourth region to pass such legislation, but it is the first among those governed by the centre-right. This development therefore takes on a political and cultural significance that extends beyond regional boundaries: it shows how the principle of absolute self-determination is now gaining ground within political camps which, at least in name, should be committed to defending life, the family and the natural order.
Euthanasia is not merely a personal choice
Assisted suicide involves the deliberate seeking of death by a person who, believing they no longer have any reason to live, asks public institutions to help them end their life. The issue is therefore not merely a private decision. Once the law intervenes, suicide ceases to be regarded as a tragedy to be prevented and becomes a possibility recognised and organised by the regional or national government.
Media hails a self-chosen death
This choice is presented by the media as the exercise of a right and as a noble act of self-determination, which the law should neither prohibit nor moral judgement censure. There is talk of ‘freedom’, ‘dignity’, ‘informed choice’ and ‘right’, whilst care is taken to avoid mentioning that every request for assisted suicide contains, even before the desire to die, a desperate cry of pain.
The sick and the weak become vulnerable
If voluntary death is portrayed as a courageous and dignified choice, the message that reaches the public is devastating. An elderly person who feels they are a burden, a sick person who fears being abandoned, or a person with a disability who feels the financial and psychological burden of their care may come to believe that dying is an act of generosity towards their family or the most dignified solution to their situation.
Accepting despair
A profound contradiction is evident here. When a desperate person attempts to take their own life, society mobilises doctors, psychologists and the police to save them. Yet when that same intention is expressed under certain clinical conditions and translated into a legal procedure, it is celebrated as an expression of freedom. In one case, it is asserted that life must be protected from the despair of the moment; in the other, that very same despair is accepted as the basis of a right.
The same feeling
At the very same time as the regional law on assisted suicide was passed, the front pages of the newspapers were filled with reports of heinous crimes, committed mainly within the family: fathers who slaughter their loved ones, mothers who kill their children, men who murder their wives or partners and then take their own lives. There is certainly a moral and legal distinction between those who kill their family members and those who ask for help to die. However, at the root of both phenomena lies the same sense of despair.
The materialistic outlook on life
Despair is the absence of all hope. It is one of the most profound consequences of the materialism that dominates contemporary society. Materialism does not consist merely of an attachment to money or material possessions. More fundamentally, it is a conception of reality that reduces human beings to their biological, economic and psychological dimensions. From this perspective, the value of life depends on the pleasure it brings, the autonomy it affords, the health one enjoys and the success one achieves. When these conditions are lost, so too is the very reason for living.
Demonic reversal of love
In the most terrible cases, those who have lost all hope do not merely take their own lives, but seek to drag down with them those they consider part of their own destiny. The family, which ought to be a place of protection and love, then becomes the scene of an extreme desire for domination: ‘If my life no longer has any meaning, neither should yours continue.’ This is the demonic reversal of love, which no longer seeks the good of the other, but seeks to possess them to the point of annihilation.
Without an afterlife, there is no hope
Contemporary society promises happiness through well-being, pleasure, success and the absence of any limits. But it is precisely this false promise that paves the way for despair. Those who have been brought up to believe that happiness is synonymous with the fulfilment of one’s desires are ill-equipped to cope with illness, loss, abandonment and defeat. If a person regards material reality as the sole horizon of their existence, they are no longer able to make sense of their life. A civilisation that has promised people autonomy and the fulfilment of every desire, yet has deprived them of God and the hope of eternal life, leaves them defenceless in the face of pain and death. Despair is therefore far more than an individual psychological state: it is the spiritual and social illness of our time.
Our hope is in Him
This profound evil cannot be cured by legal or political means. First and foremost, we must restore to man true hope—that is, supernatural hope, which has never deceived anyone. But to restore hope, we must first restore faith to man, for faith is the foundation and prerequisite of hope. And what faith is there, if not faith in God, the Creator and Lord of history; in Jesus Christ, the Redeemer and Saviour of humanity; in his Cross, which has conquered sin; and in his Resurrection, which has defeated death?
Life doesn’t end here
Those who embrace the immense and comforting vision of faith realise that they are not the product of chance, nor beings destined for nothingness, but creatures loved by God and called to eternal life. Hope, which springs from faith, is the certainty that life does not end within the narrow confines of earthly existence and that humankind is called to possess eternal blessings, even when everything seems to be crumbling around them.
Not a single tear escapes God’s gaze
Christian hope does not diminish the gravity of trials. It teaches, however, that no suffering that is accepted and offered up is in vain, that no tear escapes God’s gaze, and that even from the deepest darkness Providence can bring about a greater good. When all seems lost on a human level, the horizon of eternity remains open. It is this horizon that prevents despair from having the last word.
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This article was first published on corrispondenzaromana.it.