Cranmer is more than a little irritated by … bland and oblique moralising

Oh crikey. When Cranmer gets a little irritated, property gets damaged, so imagine that carnage that will ensue now that he’s more than a little irritated. Your Grace, what’s got you so riled up?

While Cranmer agrees that the decriminalisation of suicide in 1961 made a modicum of sense insofar as one could never achieve a successful prosecution of the successful and ought to express compassion toward the unsuccessful, the liberalisation of the law on euthanasia would be a dangerously amoral development, as the Lords Spiritual asserted when the issue was last presented to Parliament.

Aha, euthanasia – always a good way of telling the religious person from the secular. Along with abortion, it’s the last area where the faithful believe that they have the right to impose their views on everybody else in our society. Unfortunately Cranmer is not content to assert that his particular faith group is against suicide / euthanasia – he wishes to demonstrate that

Opposition to ‘do anything which is destructive of life’ is one of the few general rules which unites all of the world’s religions

as well as apparently being against the principles of Enlightenment secularism. Unfortunately the quotations he provides demonstrate exactly why the world’s religions are in no position to dictate what the individual does with their body. Let’s hear from Pope John Paul II:

As well as for reasons of misguided pity at the sight of the patient’s suffering, euthanasia is sometimes justified by the utilitarian motive of avoiding costs which bring no return and weigh heavily on society.

The phrase “misguided pity” alone should clue us in that JP2 isn’t on particularly solid ground, since such pity is eminently well-guided; it’s exactly the same pity that made Jesus weep. Pope Benedict XVI, how about you?

freedom to kill is not a true freedom but a tyranny that reduces the human being to slavery.

This, my friends, is nonsense (possibly on stilts). Oh, it’s a good soundbite, but read that sentence back and see if you can find any meaning in it whatsoever. There’s no explanation of how “freedom to kill” (a nicely-loaded phrase) is a tyranny, or how it reduces a human being to slavery, and I’ll wager that no such explanation will be forthcoming.

Without wanting to reveal Cranmer’s sources, I believe that he’s lifted his quotations from the article Reason oppposes Euthanasia by Michael Straiton (Catholic Medical Quarterly, February 2006), which provides an interesting overview of the positions of the various faiths. Sure enough, they all agree – suicide is a bad thing. The problem is this: I’m not a member of any of those faiths, so why should I give a damn what any of them think? I certainly don’t allow other religions to tell me how to treat women (for example), so why should they have a say in how I treat myself?

In a culture that worships youth, beauty and physical fitness, the elderly, ugly and disabled may be seen as revolting, but they are also made in the image of God.

I don’t see the elderly, ugly and disabled as revolting, but – as far as I know – nobody has made the case that euthanasia should be permitted on grounds of ugliness. The example that Cranmer cites is of a French woman who is suffering a terminal cancerous growth in her head which – apart from disfiguring her – will gradually erode each of her senses while causing irreparable brain damage. I’m no medical expert, but that sounds a) really painful and b) really pointless. No, wait! There is a point:

And just like he did at Calvary, they must be exhorted to suffer and endure with dignity whatever life throws at them. And then, with Job, shall they know that their redeemer lives.

Why must they suffer and endure with dignity, when they choose not to and don’t have to? Apparently if you suffer enough, you get to know that your redeemer lives. This raises many more questions than it answers: why you can’t get to know that your redeemer lives without all that suffering? How does that mechanism work if you already know that your redeemer lives? And what about all those other religions that object to suicide – do they each get their own redeemer?

Suffering is natural to the human condition, and the end of life does not need hastening but loving; there should be no easy escape, but dignity and care.

The problem is that suicide is also natural to the human condition, and that’s the real reason why everybody wants to keep it off the agenda. If all the constraints on suicide – legal and social – were removed, I predict that we would witness an immediate and massive increase in suicides as people sought to escape their suffering. The suicidal impulse is like the white whale, submerged deep within the ocean of our soul but surfacing swiftly and furiously and without warning.

Do I think euthanasia is a good thing? No, no more than I think abortion is a good thing. Do I think we should legislate on the basis of what I think? Absolutely not. I am unable to make a case against either of these practices without asserting that I have more rights over somebody else’s body than they do themselves. This is a far more dangerous situation, because it then opens me up to other people – such as Cranmer himself – asserting that he has more rights over my body than I do.

Many of my friends already know that I tend towards Stoicism, and so I will leave you with a quote from a Stoic philosopher who did not believe that suicide was the great evil that Cranmer believes it to be: Seneca, who took his own life on the command of imperial fruitloop Nero Claudius Caesar.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals on the same level, insomuch that life itself were a punishment without it.