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Roll-Back Assisted Suicide Before It’s Too Late
On Oct. 5 Gov. Jerry Brown signed ABx2-15 (Eggman) the so-called “End-of-Life Option Act,” authorizing physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to patients who are determined to have a terminal illness and less than six months to live.
“What happened” that day “was an enormous culture shift in our country, not unlike Roe v. Wade,” said Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Program in Medical Ethics at UC Irvine School of Medicine, at the Sacramento Catholic Forum on Oct. 15. The law also changes the “culture of medicine” from a focus on saving lives to helping end them, he said.
The California Catholic Bishops predicted that the law will put “the elderly and disabled” in “great peril.”
But “it’s not too late,” Dr. Kheriaty asserted. “We should work even harder at rolling this law back.”
Seniors Against Assisted Suicide
is organizing a referendum campaign to halt the implementation of the physician-assisted suicide law. The referendum is now at the printer. As soon as distribution information is available, we’ll notify readers of when and how to obtain copies. About half a million signatures must be gathered by Jan. 4 to place the question on the ballot in November 2016. If that happens, the law will not be implemented until after the voters make a decision.
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Thomas Merton and His Call for Dialogue and Peace
During his recent speech to Congress on September 24, Pope Francis paid special tribute to the contributions of four great Americans – two Catholics, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, and two non-Catholics, Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In this third installment, we examine the life and legacy of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, who Pope Francis highlighted for "the capacity for dialogue and openness to God."
Thomas Merton was born in France in 1915, but he spent time in the United States as a small child. He returned to America in 1935 to attend Columbia University, where he graduated in 1938. During this time, Merton began to explore Catholicism and was deeply inspired by the writings of poet and priest Gerald Manley Hopkins.
After hearing a call to the religious life, Merton first explored becoming a Franciscan friar. However, in 1941, he instead entered a Trappist monastery at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1949 and given the name Father Louis.
Merton was a gifted poet, writer, social activist, and student of comparative religion. His bestselling 1948 autobiography,
The Seven Storey Mountain, was named as one of the best non-fiction books of the 20th century by the
National Review.
To many, Merton is a symbol of peace and dialogue. The Thomas Merton Award, a peace prize, has been awarded since 1972 by the Thomas Merton Center for Peace and Social Justice located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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