Pontifical Academy for Life Tries to Clarify Abp. Paglia’s Troubling Assisted Suicide Comments

LifeSite News ^ | 4/24/23 | Michael Haynes

[marshmallow]

The Academy for Life has issued a statement that still appeared to defend how a 'legal' route could permit euthanasia.

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has been forced to issue a new statement after he delivered public comments supporting euthanasia last week.

“Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, reiterates his ‘no’ towards euthanasia and assisted suicide, in full adherence to the Magisterium,” reads an April 24 press release from the Academy for Life (PAV). The official English translation is found here.

Background

The statement was issued after news broke of a recent intervention made by Paglia during a conference last week, during which he defended euthanasia. Paglia’s text, published April 23, caused a storm online with numerous commentators slating Paglia and calling the archbishop’s comments “deeply scandalous.”

Paglia had stated that “personally, I would not practice suicide assistance, but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in.”

He also cited Pope Francis’ change to the promoted teaching on the death penalty, saying that while “before we did not exclude that there were circumstances for which it could be legitimized, today we no longer consider it permissible, under any circumstances.”

Highlighting “accompaniment,” Paglia stated that such accompaniment “requires a great deal of work on oneself, not only on a personal level, but also on a social and cultural one, on one’s being in solidarity with the limit, in the separation and passage of death.”

[ebb tide]

He also cited Pope Francis’ change to the promoted teaching on the death penalty, saying that while “before we did not exclude that there were circumstances for which it could be legitimized, today we no longer consider it permissible, under any circumstances.”

So executing a mass murderer is not legitimized or permisible, but murdering one's own self is both legitimate and persissible in Frankenchurch.

[MDLION]

I hate the confusion in teaching in this pontificate. The wonderful Pontifical Academy For Life needs to be shuttered if they’re going to keep spewing weird, Gnostic, heretical stuff.