c. 2004 Religion News Service

French Lawmakers Adopt Passive Euthanasia Legislation

PARIS (RNS) France’s National Assembly overwhelming adopted legislation Tuesday (Nov. 30) legalizing passive euthanasia. But the bill falls far short of more daring right-to-die laws elsewhere in Europe.

With 548 out of 551 lawmakers voting in favor of a broader patient-rights bill, which permits withholding life-sustaining care, support crossed party lines, even though lawmakers voted for it for starkly different reasons. Three lawmakers abstained from voting.

Anti-euthanasia lawmakers said they hope the legislation will set the boundaries of what is legally permissible in medicine. But other politicians and right-to-die associations hope the legislation marks the first step toward more far-reaching reforms, including legalizing active euthanasia, sometimes called “mercy killing.”

“It’s a first step,” said Jeanine Girnt, vice president of the Paris-based Association for the Right to Die in Dignity, which is lobbying to legalize active euthanasia in France. “But what we fear is lawmakers will now say, `We’ve dealt with right-to-die issues, and we’re not going further.”’

The French legislation allows doctors to withhold life-sustaining medicines from terminally ill patients under narrowly defined circumstances. It falls short of laws passed in Belgium or the Netherlands, which legalize active euthanasia, or in Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal.

While definitions vary from country to country, passive euthanasia is generally seen as the hastening of death by altering some form of support and allowing the patient to die.

Active euthanasia involves causing the death of a person through a direct action, such as a lethal injection.

Physician-assisted suicide has a doctor providing the means for a patient to end his or her life.

In the United States, passive euthanasia is sometimes legal and active euthanasia, made famous by Dr. Jack Kevorkian, is banned. Oregon is the only state that allows assisted suicide, through lethal medication.

Girnt said the French legislation “is especially designed to help medical staff who have to make life-and-death decisions every day. But it doesn’t go further than that.”

Like elsewhere in the world, euthanasia and other right-to-die questions are deeply divisive ethical and religious issues in France, with Pope John Paul II and the Roman Catholic Church strongly opposing such methods as part of a “culture of death.”

The question took on new urgency last year after a handicapped young Frenchman, Vincent Humbert, took his life with his mother’s help.

A few months before his death, 22-year-old Humbert _ left blind, deaf and mute from a car accident in 2000 _ had written to French President Jacques Chirac asking for the legal right to end his life.

_ Elizabeth Bryant

Pope Praises Controversial Founder of Legionaires of Christ

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope John Paul II offered warm praise and his blessing Tuesday (Nov. 30) to mark the 60th anniversary of the ordination of the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, controversial founder of the Legionaires of Christ.

Receiving some 4,000 Maciel supporters, their families and well-wishers, the pope gave Maciel his “affectionate greeting” and “the most cordial wishes for a priestly ministry filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

“I impart from the heart to dear Father Maciel and all of you present here a special apostolic blessing,” John Paul said.

Maciel, who like the pope is 84 years old, founded the Legionaires in Mexico in 1941 and extended it to the United States in 1965.

The Legionaires have stirred controversy. They have been praised for the thoroughness of the education they offer and criticized for their militant style.

Starting in the 1950s, Maciel has been accused of sexually molesting seminarians, but he has denied the accusations, and a Vatican investigation produced no public findings. The pope gave him a place of honor at a Mass he celebrated in Mexico City in 2002.

There are now 500 Legionaire priests; 2,500 seminarians studying in 24 seminaries in Europe, the Americas and Australia; and 870 lay members. The institute also operates 166 schools and nine universities, including the Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum (Queen of the Apostles) University in Rome.

Archbishop Franc Rode, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, ordained 59 members of the institute to the priesthood Thursday (Nov. 25) in the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

_ Peggy Polk

Gay Rights Groups Praise Supreme Court Refusal on Gay Marriage

WASHINGTON (RNS) Gay rights groups praised the U.S. Supreme Court for refusing to intervene in a Massachusetts decision allowing gay marriage while religious conservatives said they will find other ways to ban such unions.

Gay marriage advocates said the high court’s decision Monday (Nov. 29) to reject, without comment, a gay marriage challenge from Bay State conservatives protects the 4,000 gay couples who have been legally wed since last May.

“I really wish that people would let us get on with raising our kids … and stop interfering with marriage,” said Gina Nortonsmith of Northampton, Mass., who was one of the original plaintiffs who sued for the right to marry. She is now married to Heidi Nortonsmith, and the couple has two children.

Monday’s decision sends the issue back to Massachusetts, where state legislators last March approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. That measure needs to pass a second time and then be approved by voters in 2006 in order to become law.

“The bottom line is nobody is being harmed by the Massachusetts state law treating all couples equally,” said David Buckel, director of the legal marriage project of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Conservative groups said the decision was hardly surprising, and said it would intensify their efforts to pass a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

“The courts have long proven themselves to be no friend of the traditional family or traditional values,” said James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. “As long as the fate of marriage and morality in America rests with the judiciary, the nation’s families remain vulnerable.”

Under a 1913 law, out-of-state gay couples are ineligible for Massachusetts marriage licenses. While gay marriages appear intact for now, state religious leaders say they will continue the fight to maintain the traditional definition of marriage.

“The goal remains _ the people of Massachusetts should have the opportunity to reaffirm marriage as the union between one man and one woman,” said a statement by the Massachusetts Catholic Conference. “A constitutional amendment … should be brought to the people for their consideration.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom and Dan Ring

Fifth Methodist Body Joins Pan-Methodist Commission

(RNS) A fifth Methodist body has joined an ongoing effort to foster cooperation among black and white Methodists.

The little-known Union American Methodist Episcopal Church joined the Commission on Pan-Methodist Cooperation and Union during the commission’s Nov. 19-21 meeting in Dallas, the United Methodist News Service reported.

“We were first known as the Church of Africans,” said Bishop Linwood Rideout, one of three bishops of the denomination. “We are known as an invisible strand of African Methodism because our founder was never given the recognition that he deserved.”

His 6,000-member church has congregations in New England, Jamaica and Liberia. It was founded in 1805 after lay preachers led blacks out of a predominantly white Methodist church in Wilmington, Del.

The other members of the commission are the African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Christian Methodist Episcopal and United Methodist churches. They are working on possible areas of cooperation related to social concerns, evangelism, publications and higher education.

Rideout’s group was overwhelmingly welcomed to the commission.

“It is important to be visible and get to know other branches of Methodism and get to know brothers and sisters whose faith is based on the same thing,” he said.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Quote of the Day: California Lawyer Terry Thompson

(RNS) “It’s a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful.”

_ Terry Thompson, lawyer for Steven Williams, a Cupertino, Calif., teacher who has filed suit against his principal after being barred from giving students American history documents that refer to God, including the Declaration of Independence. Thompson was quoted by the Reuters news agency.

MO/PH RNS END