It is legal for a doctor to euthanise a person in Canada. Not just someone whose death is imminent, but also a person with a mental disorder who has decided – or been persuaded – that is it better to die than live. The ACoC is going along with this because it is not interested in “opposing the law”. In the Anglican Church of Canada, we call this being prophetic.
And, after all, abortion up to and during birth, prostitution and smoking marijuana are also all legal and the Anglican Church of Canada doesn’t oppose them either. So at least its consistent. Consistently cowardly, spiritually bankrupt and in thrall to the zeitgeist.
From here:
The Anglican Church of Canada should continue to focus on providing pastoral care to people who are considering medical assistance in dying (MAID), not on opposing the law, says Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Bill C-7, passed in March 2021, opened up the option for patients whose deaths are not imminent—and, as of next March, those suffering only from mental disorders—to seek MAID, attracting some controversy. As the Journal reported in the first part of this series, some advocates for the rights of people with disabilities have criticized it on the grounds that it offers death as a replacement for adequate care. (See “Justice and the new assisted death”) And at least two authors of In Sure and Certain Hope, a 2016 document offered as a resource for discussions around MAID, believe the bill raises questions which may require a new response from the church.
But any new response by the church is unlikely to involve taking a public stance on the law, Nicholls says.
“It’s been clear for some time that the mood in Canada [is] not … to consider what churches have to say about this,” she says. “It’s been seen as imposing Christian values—which I think is a little unfair, as I don’t think all of the arguments have been based on a faith perspective.” Meanwhile, the shrinking staff of the church’s national office has limited capacity to take on a question of this size, she adds, especially as the law, in her view, is a “fait accompli.”
Just Welby really didn’t want to talk about sex at the recent Lambeth gathering; specifically homosexual sex. It was his elephant in the room: everyone knew it was there, the global south bishops wanted to talk about it and Welby wished it would just go away. Instead, he wanted to talk about: Safe Church; Anglican Identity; Reconciliation; Human Dignity; Environment and Sustainable Development; Christian Unity; Inter Faith Relations; Discipleship; Science and Faith and Mission and Evangelism.
We will be returning to our dioceses with a renewed commitment to the Lambeth Calls for Mission and Evangelism, Safe Church, Reconciliation, Human Dignity and Climate Justice as well as those Calls that will be discussed on Hospitality (Christian Unity and Interfaith relationships), and Discipleship.
As you can imagine, it was an easy transition from oil executive to Archbishop of Canterbury to the Ministry of Silly Walks – I, for one, have seen this coming for some time.
