The following comes from a June 24 San Jose Mercury News article by Jessica Calefati:
SACRAMENTO — The state Assembly Health Committee on Tuesday postponed a key vote on legislation that would allow adults with a terminal illness to seek medication from a doctor to end their lives, raising doubts about the fate of the hotly contested bill.
Democrats representing the Bay Area who sit on the committee are expected to support the End of Life Option Act, but several Democratic members from Southern California remain undecided. And they’re facing intense pressure from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to vote no.
“We need a little more time,” said Sen. Bill Monning, D-Monterey, a co-sponsor of SB128. “We’re going to keep pushing forward.”
The Assembly Health Committee has 19 members, including 12 Democrats. When the bill returns to the panel in two weeks, it will need support from at least 10 lawmakers to pass the measure onto the Assembly Judiciary Committee.
The California Catholic Conference, which represents Catholic churches across the state, has firmly opposed the legislation since January, when Monning and Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, unveiled it at the Capitol.
Earlier this month, when the measure cleared the state Senate, proponents seemed confident it would easily win approval in the overwhelmingly Democratic state Assembly.
But last week, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez sent a letter to members of the health committee, urging them to reject legislation he believes has “dangerous implications for our state, especially the poor and the most vulnerable.”
“We cannot allow California to become a place where we respond to human suffering by simply making it easier for people to kill themselves,” Gomez wrote. “Helping someone die — even if that person is desperate and asks for the help — is still killing.”
Gomez attacked the bill as a “quick-fix ‘solution’ that involves killing the people we find too difficult, too burdensome or too expensive to take care of.” He called on Catholic priests and parishioners from across Los Angeles County to contact local lawmakers who sit on the committee and urge them to vote no.
“The archbishop is very excited about the energy,” Andrew Rivas, a spokesman for Gomez, said Wednesday.
Bravo Archbishop José Gomez! Euthanasia is a terrible crime that once approved as a human right will be expanded and expanded to old rich people with inheritances and young poor retarded children. JP2 was right, the culture of death is the most important issue in our times. The right of Sodomy as proposed by this Pope and our California Government are a slippery slope that cannot be reversed by now. See you for Mass at the catacombs.
Gratias, Pope Francis has come out against so-called same-sex marriage. Where have you been?
Totally against this law which is sponsoring suicide that goes against God’ principle!
Let’s think in the generations to come! Mothers and Fathers think about your kids and grandkids!
Respect for dying with dignity! We all want to go to Heaven!
Let’s all ask the Archbishop to write a similar letter about AB 775, the bill intended to put pro-life centers out of business by ordering them to violate their consciences as a condition of staying open.
Well, at least Abp. Gomez did something affirmative. But, in looking at his June 16 letter to Chairman Bonta, a Catholic Reader would be struck by (1) no mention of Jesus Christ, (2) or the Catechism or any specific Church teaching against murder, (3) the statement that “Death will always be a mystery . . . (really, Archbishop?), and (4) a sign-off with “May God grant you peace”.
The point here should not be discrimination against the poor, but violation of the prohibition against murder, which includes self-murder. The issue with people is that they are encouraged to see euthanasia as another form of “health care” and not as a moral issue.
Of course, this view is wrong, and represents another way for Satan to trick people…
(Continued) “into commiting an act that is abhorrent God. That should have been Abp. Gomez’s message”.
Excellent posts St. Christopher!
A TRUE SHEPHERD OF OUR CHURCH!!!
I WOULD LOVE TO SEE ALL THE BISHOPS OF CALIFORNIA DO THE VERY SAME THING!!
GOD BLESS YOU AB GOMEZ.
It is past time for every Bishop, Archbishop and Cardinal in the US to stand up and speak out strongly on all of these moral issues. For far too long, these same men have sat there quietly, as if these challenges to morality would somehow disappear. Shame on most of them. Same goes for our parish pastors and priests who rarely ever preach on moral issues from the pulpit.
Out Catholic Church has turned into the religion of Nice where one is hard pressed to tell the difference between Catholicism and the modern-day main-line Protestant churches.
God bless, Archbishop Gomez for this. He knows making killers out of doctors is not a moral or bright idea. It is better to train more oncologists in pain killing techniques when people are dying.