“The Church always has the duty to explain moral issues to the faithful. We will not let anyone take that away from us. We are no longer in the former state where we were forbidden to do so,” stresses Dr Gabriel Kavčič, spokesman for the Slovenian Bishops’ Conference. Regarding the law that will be decided in the referendum, he believes it is “a rotten idea and a rotten law. Twice rotten.”
“The Slovenian Bishops’ Conference has not actively entered the campaign. We do share the occasional video. The bishops are fulfilling their pastoral duties – that is, they explain Church teaching in their homilies – but the Bishops’ Conference has never said: ‘Now go and vote against it.’ That would be interference in the referendum campaign,” Kavčič explained to Nova24TV in response to the accusations levelled against them.On the other side, he says, there are several institutes and organisations that are directly or indirectly linked to the Bishops’ Conference and have officially registered for the referendum campaign – above all the Movement for Life, the Association of Catholic Physicians and the Pridi.com Institute. “They are perfectly entitled to take part in the referendum campaign,” he clarified, adding that the Church always has the duty to explain moral issues to believers. “We can explain Church teaching whether there is a referendum or not,” he said clearly.
They will not accept the Church being excluded from public space
“There is a difference between separation of Church and state on the one hand, and the total exclusion of the Church from everything state-related or public on the other,” Kavčič explained regarding accusations that a priest had hinted how people should vote. He said they will not accept the Church being driven out of the public space, because there is no need for it and because society would not be healthy without it. Next time, someone else will be singled out. “What we are really seeing is disagreement with an opinion. Because someone disagrees with the opinion, they try to discredit it. In this case the Church has emerged as the opponent, and we are back where we were decades ago,” he added.
In the programme Tema dneva, Kavčič said they had been involved in the drafting of education legislation – specifically, the Bishops’ Conference Education Commission had been active. They always offer constructive suggestions and amendments, including on other laws and on the one now going to referendum. They even took part in parliamentary committee sessions. “We have grown used to being little more than decoration – something else gets done behind the backdrop,” he pointed out.
The sanctity of human life must never be endangered
“The sanctity of human life must never be put at risk,” Kavčič began when asked why the euthanasia law is so controversial, especially since many successful Western countries have adopted it and it is supposed to prevent suffering. “On the other side they will say that everyone has the right to it. We say that introducing such a ‘right’ would create a quasi-right that exists only on paper but can be exercised in reality. Because it is not a real right, it will first burden doctors. The moment the law enters into force, every family doctor will come under its influence,” he explained, adding that it will then also affect patients.“Today, a sick, elderly, suffering person has only one path ahead: to finish their life as peacefully as possible – as content as possible, in relative health, with appropriate medication and all necessary care – and reach what Christians call a prepared death. Once this law exists, there will be two paths. One will remain the same, the other will be that they can ‘remove themselves’,” he continued, warning that we must also take into account the collapsing healthcare system in which you have to be sick enough even to get an appointment. “We cannot support that. We have the Hippocratic Oath, we have passive coercion to suicide, and neither I nor – even less – doctors can assist in something that is not treatment,” he stressed, adding that the law contains many other problems: from the fact that the cause of death will not be recorded (only the illness will be listed, so we will have no statistics), problems with conscientious objection, to the fact that the system is designed to creep like ivy through the entire Slovenian healthcare system instead of being kept separate, as it is, for example, in Austria.When asked whether believers abroad also opt for euthanasia, he replied that such cases certainly exist. He recalled that the Holy See issued guidelines years ago. Pope Francis signed a document in which the Holy See acknowledges the difficulties and recognises that such cases will occur even among the faithful. That is understandable, Kavčič said, because it is hard to determine exactly how devout someone is. The percentage of believers who choose euthanasia, however, is not known.
This is suicide
Since the Church does not approve of suicide, Kavčič was asked whether euthanasia would also be regarded as suicide. “Absolutely, it is suicide,” he stressed, adding that the premeditated nature of the act poses an additional problem. “There are as many kinds of suicide as there are people who commit it,” he said, reminding us that Slovenia still has a very high suicide rate – roughly speaking, about twice as many suicides as road-traffic fatalities.With assisted suicide, however, two further problems arise. “First, there is no impulsiveness; it is a carefully considered decision. Second, the entire system – in our case the healthcare system – is involved. Once it takes off, no one will be able to escape it,” he explained. A personal physician will have to make a great effort to avoid it through conscientious objection.He was then asked about the danger of external pressure. “We call that passive coercion to suicide. Fortunately, we live in a society where no one will directly tell someone ‘get rid of yourself’. On the other hand, passive coercion does not mean direct pressure; it is simply the knowledge that the other path exists. When you combine that with loneliness, complicated family situations in our country, the fact that more and more people know they are alone, and that as a nation we increasingly distrust the healthcare system – when you add all that up, you won’t even need to tell the patient ‘clear off’; they will already know they can.”The conversation also noted that in some countries, such as Canada, euthanasia already accounts for seven percent of all deaths. “Everyone can calculate what that would mean in Slovenia if we reached the same figures,” he pointed out, warning that experience shows the numbers usually rise quickly. Given the problems in the healthcare system, he said, this is not a topic to play with.“We have a rotten idea and a rotten law. Twice rotten,” he concluded.
N. Ž.
