CNA Staff, Jan 8, 2024 / 15:00 pm
Winona-Rochester Bishop Robert Barron is urging Catholics to oppose an effort to make assisted suicide legal in Minnesota — one of an increasing number of states seeking to legalize the practice, which goes against the Catholic Church’s teaching on the sanctity of all human life.
Minnesota is considering a bill (SF 1813/HF 1930) to legalize the practice of assisted suicide. In an article on the website of Word on Fire, Barron — who founded that ministry in 2000 and who previously ministered as an auxiliary bishop in California — noted that Minnesota is his home state. The bishop said the proposed law caused him to reflect on a billboard he saw in California when that state was considering legalizing assisted suicide in the mid-2010s: “My life, my death, my choice.”
The bishop wrote the billboard caused him to think of St. Paul’s exhortation to the Romans in which the saint writes: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
“Did the billboard get it right, or did St. Paul? Does my life belong to me, or is it a gift from God? Is my death a matter of my personal choice, or is it under God’s providence and at his disposal?” Barron asked.