Why Euthanasia Is Immoral & Harmful

Love is neither selfish nor unfair but rather is firmly grounded in the truth and the good. True love has no limits, and our love for one another should have no limits. If “love” were to transgress the truth or the good, it would cease to be love.

What is the truth about human dignity and suffering? What is good for the suffering person? These are the questions that must be answered objectively first before addressing the subjective feelings of the suffering person and others.

The suffering person, like all persons, has human dignity. Suffering does not take away that dignity (nothing can). That dignity commands reverence and love for the suffering person, even if that person himself or herself does not understand and embrace that dignity. What is good for the suffering person is love. The suffering person needs love. Loving a person requires recognizing the dignity of that person and showing the person due reverence because of that dignity rather than violating it.

If people recognized and revered their own dignity, they would not want others to kill them merely because they are suffering.

It is not loving to kill someone merely because they suffer; it is loving to comfort, console, and ease their pain and suffering. The dignity of the human person requires us to refrain from killing others except in self-defense. To “remove their suffering” by killing them, removing them from the world, is a violation of their human dignity, whether they want to be killed or not. The dignity of the human person has a higher value than the absence of suffering. Just because someone wants others to violate his or her own dignity does not make that violation any less of a violation; it is still wrong and harmful.

It is much more loving and compasionate to serve and comfort those who suffer rather than to kill them. Killing is merely easier (in a material sense) for those who do not suffer in certain ways (yet); loving another person is harder (in a material sense). In this sense, euthanasia is a kind of cruel sloth and laziness. But killing an innocent human being should be hard psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually for the decent and upright person. The suffering person should not want to impose this guilt on others, whether intentionally or not.

Life is always worth living because of love. If we stopped killing people who suffer and started loving and comforting them, many of them would no longer want to be killed. Love gives life purpose, despite suffering. Love gives purpose to suffering. And we all suffer in common ways and in our own individual ways. No one is immune from suffering.

Pornography vs. The Nude in Art: The Catholic-Christian Perspective

Many colleges and universities offer art classes which necessarily involve the viewing of the nude male or female human body. There are two extreme and wrong-headed responses or approaches to this kind of situation:

1. It is always and absolutely wrong to look at the naked human body merely for artistic reproduction or training. It is also always and absolutely wrong to publicly display such artistic reproductions of the nude body. Anybody who engages in such things is engaging in the deadly sin of lust.
2. Looking at the naked human body, whether in person or through art, is no big deal and shouldn’t be taken seriously at all. Anybody who wants limits upon or has any concerns about the morality of looking at the naked human body are prudes who hate the human body or don’t sufficiently value its beauty and dignity.

The correct, prudent, and temperant approach is the Catholic Christian approach outlined by Blessed Pope John Paul II (JP2) in his Theology of the Body. Artistic representation of nude forms is a very complex issue because it combines very objective truths with very subjective experiences.

Let’s look at JP2’s own words: