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Today\u2019s host(s): Scot Landry and Fr. Mark O\u2019Connell\nToday\u2019s guest(s): Janet Benestad, Secretary for Faith Formation and Evangelization\nLinks from today\u2019s show:\n\n\n\n\nToday\u2019s topics: Discussion of Cardinal Se\xe1n\u2019s Homily on Doctor-Prescribed Suicide\nSummary of today\u2019s show: Scot Landry and Fr. Mark O\u2019Connell welcome Janet Benestad, Secretary for Faith Formation and Evangelization, to discuss Cardinal Se\xe1n\u2019s homily for this Sunday, the World Day of the Sick, which will be heard in every parish in the archdiocese for the launch of an education campaign on efforts to legalize doctor-prescribed suicide in Massachusetts. Cardinal Se\xe1n warns us not to be mislead by euphemisms and the slow erosion of the respect for life. Christ\u2019s Church responds to illness with love and true compassion, not by encouraging the ill to throw their lives away.\n1st segment: Scot and Fr. Mark talked about recovering the Patriots\u2019 Super Bowl loss. They also discussed the work week, including the Presbyteral Council meeting this week. Fr. Mark said Msgr. Bill Fay, who co-leads the Pastoral Planning Commission, said people may be afraid of change, but we\u2019re going to get there anyway. There are already more than 50 parishes that share a pastor with other parishes. If we do absolutely nothing, we will get the same place, but it won\u2019t be planned. Scot said anyone who would like to see the resources that have been shared regarding the pastoral planning consultation can go to \nScot mentioned news stories today that printed a private letter from Msgr. Bill Helmick to Cardinal Sean in which he gave his feedback on the pastoral planning suggestions. Fr. Mark said violating that confidentiality is tragic. Scot said the purpose of this consultation process is to receive such feedback.\n\n\n\nScot said this Sunday is the World Day of the Sick and so Cardinal Sean has asked that a homily from him be read in all parishes this weekend to kick off an education campaign about a ballot initiative to legalize doctor-prescribed suicide.\n2nd segment: Scot and Fr. Mark welcomed Janet to the show. She said it\u2019s been several weeks of preparation for this weekend, and parishioners will not only hear or see the homily but will receive printed materials to help educate them on the proposed bill and its problems. They began by listening to the first part of Cardinal Se\xe1n\u2019s homily:\n\nI am grateful to your pastor and the parish staff for this opportunity to talk to you today on the occasion of the twentieth World Day of the Sick. We celebrate World Day of the Sick each year on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes in order to pray for the sick and the dying and for those in the healing professions. Saint Paul exhorts us today to be imitators of Christ, who stretches out his hand in compassion toward the sick. This is the model that we as Christians have emulated for centuries in our hospitals, nursing homes, and treatment centers.\nUnfortunately, this model of compassion is now being threatened. In November, citizens in Massachusetts likely will be asked to vote whether doctor-assisted suicide should be a legal and normal way to care for the terminally ill. That is why it is so important for me to talk to you now about the so-called \u201cDeath with Dignity Act.\u201d If passed, the referendum would allow an adult resident of Massachusetts\u2014 diagnosed with fewer than six months to live\u2014 to request and receive a prescription for a lethal drug. Proponents of this bill want us to believe that this is a compassionate response to the plight of people who have a terminal illness. It is not. We are called to comfort the sick, not to help them take their own lives. As the Catholic Bishops of the United States said in their recent statement on assisted suicide: \u201cTrue compassion alleviates suffering while maintaining solidarity with those who suffer. It does not put lethal drugs in their hands and abandon them to their suicidal impulses, or to the self-serving motives of others who may want them dead.\u201d\n\nScot noted how the Cardinal said our outreach to the ill is imitation of Christ\u2019s compassion for the sick. Fr. Mark said it\u2019s surprising to him to hear it is being contemplated that we can give a pill to someone to kill themselves and that is called compassion. Janet said the initiative is called the Death with Dignity Act, which co-opts the language we use about the dignity of life. The proponents will not use the word suicide, but instead call it aid in dying.\nScot said we have to ask what kind of society we want to have in the state of Massachusetts and whether we will be fooled by the proponents of a false compassion.\n\nPeople fear the dying process and the possibility of being kept alive by burdensome medical technology. They fear intolerable pain and suffering, losing control, or lingering with severe dementia. They worry about being abandoned or becoming a burden on others. For all these reasons, the ability to exercise control over the time and circumstances of death can appear attractive.\nProponents of assisted suicide say that the Church wants people to suffer and that Catholics are obliged to accept every treatment available. This is simply not true. Burdensome and futile treatments may be refused as in the case of older patients who need not have risky surgery or painful chemotherapy in order to gain a few more months of life.\n\nScot said there are two central points here. One is that it\u2019s natural to fear the dying process, but it\u2019s how we respond to those fears that is critical. Fr. Mark said it depends on what we mean by compassion. Compassion is to give palliative care, to help them not worry about what will happen after they die, to help them accept God\u2019s timing. Compassion is not to leave them thinking they are a burden.\nScot said the Cardinal then says that proponents falsely accuse the Church of wanting people to suffer. Janet said Catholics sometimes don\u2019t understand the teachings of the church either. People are not obligated to take every possible treatment. They can refuse risky surgery or sometimes chemotherapy or other burdensome treatments. They can also receive pain killers, even if those pain killers could hasten death, when death is imminent and inevitable. Scot said the key is that the prescription from the doctor is intended to alleviate suffering not to eliminate the sufferer. You can never intend the person\u2019s death.\n\nThe 5th Commandment states \u201cThou shall not kill.\u201d This certainly includes killing to alleviate suffering. Doctor-assisted suicide occurs when a doctor assists the patient to end his own life, even though does not directly administer the lethal drug. It is doctor-prescribed death. Blessed Pope John Paul II said: \u201cTo concur with the intention of another person to commit suicide and to help in carrying it out through so-called \u201cassisted suicide\u201d means to cooperate in, and at times to be the actual perpetrator of, an injustice which can never be excused, even if it is requested.\u201d\n\nScot said the Cardinal is very clear on this. This is not just the Church\u2019s teaching, but it comes from God in the Old Testament. Fr. Mark said the doctor has a moral decision to make. Do we want to leave it in the hands of the doctor? Do we want him to put a pill in someone\u2019s hand and then wash his hand of it? What are the standards for this decision? It is about expense? Is it about convenience? Why is the doctor playing God? Scot said the bill\u2019s proponents claim there are safeguards, but they don\u2019t go far enough.\nScot said people who get a terminal diagnosis, they go through mental anguish and even depression. Janet said the bill creates a class of citizens who are different from the rest of us: People whose suicides we don\u2019t prevent. People who we say are better off dead. She said there are many people who receive a terminal diagnosis who receive treatment and go on to live for years and years. For some people who have a terminal illness, they become tenacious and live life with fervor and strength.\n\nThere is a slippery slope leading from ending lives in the name of compassion to ending the lives of people with non-terminal conditions. Doctors in the Netherlands once limited euthanasia to terminally ill patients; now they provide lethal drugs to people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, mental illness, and even melancholy.\nThere is also evidence that the legalization of doctor-assisted suicide contributes to suicide in the general population. This is true in the state of Oregon which passed doctor-assisted suicide in 1994. Now, suicide is the leading cause of \u201cinjury death\u201d and the second leading cause of death among 15 to 34 year olds. The suicide rate in Oregon, which had been in decline before 1994, is now 35% higher than the national average.\n\nScot said the slippery slope is real. When we devalue human life in one case, it leads to devaluation in other cases. Fr. Mark said God\u2019s gives us a gift of our life and we need to take care of it. To think of the body as something expendable is a tragedy.\nJanet gave an example of a story from Oregon of a woman who wanted to get chemotherapy treatment for cancer, but got a letter from the insurer who said they won\u2019t pay for the cancer treatment but would pay for the lethal drug. She wasn\u2019t looking to kill herself. one case of this is too much and there are at least two documented cases of this in Oregon.\nShe said surveys show people don\u2019t completely trust doctors, because of fears of overtreatment. So why would we trust doctors to prescribe lethal pills? Scot said people certainly trust their insurers even less and the lethal drugs are far more economical than any long-term treatments. They have an economic incentive.\nScot said we\u2019ve also seen suicide rates among young people go up because assisted suicide makes it seem acceptable. Why do we say suicide is unacceptable for a healthy young person, but it\u2019s acceptable for the terminally ill? Fr. Mark said we also have to protect our good Catholic doctors from pressure to administer these pills.\n\nDoctor-assisted suicide is being presented as a way for the terminally ill to have greater freedom at the end of life. However, it would create pressures to limit our freedom, because it could establish an expectation that certain people will be better served by being dead, a dubious premise indeed! It creates a class of people\u2014 those whom doctors predict will live six months or less\u2014 for whom suicide should be facilitated, even made to seem attractive. It also opens the door for financially-motivated organizations like insurance companies and managed-care plans to someday encourage and pressure those at the end of their life to think that doctor-assisted suicide is an attractive option. Legalization of doctor-assisted suicide would compromise the practice of medicine. The Hippocratic Oath that has guided doctors for more than two thousand years says, \u201cI will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan.\u201d Doctors and nurses are known for this devotion to heal and the refusal to assist in killing. Assisted suicide would compromise this ancient ethical code and the practice of medicine itself. It is important for you to know that the Massachusetts Medical Society voted recently by an overwhelming majority not to support this referendum.\n\nScot said this sort of bill could change the relationship our doctors have with us and this is probably why the Mass. Medical Society voted overwhelmingly not to support this initiative.\n\nThere are large flaws in the bill itself. For one thing, it requires that a doctor determine that the patient is capable of asking for lethal drugs, but there are no explicit criteria for assessing the mental capacity at the time of the request, nor is there a mandate to assess mental capacity at the time of the suicide. The bill also requires two witnesses to attest to the patient\u2019s competence, but one of the witnesses can be a total stranger, and another can be the sick person\u2019s heir. Alfred Hitchcock would make movies about this stuff. Also the law does not require that anyone witness the suicide, so there is no way to know for certain that the act was voluntary. Finally, the death certificate lists the underlying disease as the cause of death, not assisted suicide. This creates underreporting and a legalized deception.\nIndeed this initiative is on the ballot in part because of the deceptive way in which the required signatures were obtained. Last Fall, proponents of this bill solicited signatures from Massachusetts citizens as part of the process for getting it on the ballot. You may have been approached and asked to sign the petition. People who were asked to sign reported that the petition was presented as a bill to \u201caid the terminally ill.\u201d In fact, the bill does not use the word \u201csuicide\u201d because, as the lawyer for the organization promoting the bill has said, the word \u201csuicide\u201d is inflammatory. Instead, it talks about \u201caid in dying\u201d or \u201cA-I-D.\u201d The major organization behind this effort also changed its name from the \u201cHemlock Society\u201d to the deceptive \u201cCompassion and Choices.\u201d\n\nJanet said it is a deception to have the cause of death not be listed as suicide. Insurance companies don\u2019t want to be seen as paying for suicide. It\u2019s also the case that no one has to be present at the time of death so you don\u2019t know how it was administered. Did they even take it voluntarily? The bill has very few safeguards.\nScot wondered which is a bigger euphemism: Death with Dignity or Compassion and Choices. Fr. Mark said this could absolutely lead to murder. There will one day be a trial in which it is asked whether an heir caused the death of a person. Scot said there is no requirement for these deaths even to be videotaped.\nScot said the euphemisms are deceptive because during the ballot signature process people said they signed petitions thinking they were supporting help fort he terminally ill. Janet said there was a real intent to deceive people.\nJanet said the Secretary of State will determine what will go into the referendum on election day, but we do know that we will encourage people to vote No.\n\nSuicide is always a tragedy. A vote for assisted suicide would be a vote for suicide. For that reason, I ask you now to do three things to help stop doctor-assisted suicide from becoming law in Massachusetts.\nFirst, pray for people who are seriously ill and dying, and for their caregivers. Visit the sick which is one of the corporal works of mercy.\nSecond, avoid believing the misleading and seductive language of \u201cdignity,\u201d \u201cmercy,\u201d \u201ccompassion\u201d or \u201caid in dying\u201d that proponents of the legislation will use to describe assisted suicide.\nThird, educate yourselves as much as possible on assisted suicide and share that knowledge with others. Brochures, prayer cards, bulletin inserts and other materials have been prepared for you and are available in your parish. Please visit the website which has been created to educate people on this issue.\n\nScot said the Cardinal couldn\u2019t be clearer on what he wants people to do and what this bill is about. He asked people to educate themselves and their friends and neighbors. Janet said the task of caring for the terminally ill can be a great burden. As a society we should undertake as an act of charity to assist families caring for someone who is terminally ill. She said the cardinal wanted this education campaign to be underway before the election season really got underway and distracted people away from this important issue. We as Catholics should be at the forefront of good palliative care.\n\nOur society will be judged by how we treat those who are ill and the infirm. They need our care and protection, not lethal drugs. As the Bishops wrote last year:\nWe as Catholics should be leaders in the effort to defend and uphold the principle that each of us has a right to live with dignity through every day of our lives. Let us join with other concerned citizens, including disability rights advocates and members of the healing professions, to stand for the dignity of people with serious illnesses and disabilities and promote life-affirming solutions for their hardships. We should ensure that the families of people with terminal illnesses will never feel they have been left alone in caring for their needs. The claim that the \u201cquick fix\u201d of an overdose of drugs can substitute for these efforts is an affront to patients, caregivers and the ideals of medicine.\nWhen we grow old or sick and we are tempted to lose heart, we should be surrounded by people who ask \u201cHow can I help you?\u201d We deserve to grow old in a society that views our cares and needs with a compassion grounded in respect, offering genuine support in our final days. The choices we make together now will decide whether this is the kind of caring society we will leave to future generations.\nLet us work together to build a civilization of love \u2013 a love which is stronger than death! God bless you.\n\nFr. Mark said we need to reach out to the sick. We have a duty as Christians to bring Christ\u2019s love. Yes, it\u2019s difficult and expensive. Who cares? These are our loved ones, those loved by God that we are obligated to care for? Scot asked if our society will be viewed as having money or love as most important to us. The Cardinal hopes that we are building a civilization of love.\n3rd segment: It\u2019s time to announce this week\u2019s winner of the WQOM Benefactor Raffle.\nOur prize this week is the CD: \u201cThe Apostle of the Rosary: Servant of God Father Patrick Peyton\u201d by St. Joseph Communications.\nThis week\u2019s benefactor card raffle winner is Jim Fadule, from Wellesley Hills, MA. Congratulations, Jim!\nIf you would like to be eligible to win in an upcoming week, please visit . For a one-time $30 donation, you\u2019ll receive the Station of the Cross benefactor card and key tag, making you eligible for WQOM\u2019s weekly raffle of books, DVDs, CDs and religious items. We\u2019ll be announcing the winner each Wednesday during \u201cThe Good Catholic Life\u201d program.\n4th segment: Now as we do every week at this time, we will consider the Mass readings for this Sunday, specifically the Gospel reading.\n\n\n\n\nThe Lord said to Moses and Aaron, \u201cIf someone has on his skin a scab or pustule or blotch which appears to be the sore of leprosy, he shall be brought to Aaron, the priest, or to one of the priests among his descendants. If the man is leprous and unclean, the priest shall declare him unclean by reason of the sore on his head.\n\u201cThe one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare, and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, \u2018Unclean, unclean!\u2019 As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean, since he is in fact unclean. He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.\u201d\n\n\nSecond Reading for February 12, 2012, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time (1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1)\n\n\nBrothers and sisters, Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. Avoid giving offense, whether to the Jews or Greeks or the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit but that of the many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.\n\n\nGospel for February 12, 2012, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time\n\n\nA leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, \u201cIf you wish, you can make me clean.\u201d Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, \u201cI do will it. Be made clean.\u201d The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean. Then, warning the him sternly, he dismissed him at once.\nHe said to him, \u201cSee that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.\u201d\nThe man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.\n\nScot said at the end of the second reading, Paul tells us to imitate Christ. One of the way is to do as Jesus did. The lepers were outcast and Jesus reached out to them with compassion with love, when no one else would ever think of even touching them. The leper wanted to be cleaned physically and spiritually. Fr. Mark said Jesus touched someone who was an outsider from society because that wasn\u2019t a barrier for Jesus.\nScot said the lepers were hurt by their illness, but they were also hurt by their ostracization from the community. Janet said those with terminal illness will also be ostracized into a second-class category. Scot said when he thinks of St. Paul\u2019s reading, we see how JEsus responded to the lepers in his day. We\u2019re not going to see actual lepers today, but there are many figurative lepers in society today: people who were considered ugly or unattractive or bodily afflictions; people with metal illness or disabilities; spiritual or moral lepers, public sinners; economic lepers, the homeless and the very poor; emotional lepers, those who feel alone. It doesn\u2019t take us long to find people who are outcasts in society that we can reach out to with the love of Christ.\nFr. Mark points out in this reading the role of the Church. The man was healed and rejoiced in it, but Jesus told him to go present himself to the priest who would declare him clean. Jesus respected the Church\u2019s role in society. There is a role of the Church to protect the outcasts of society.\nJanet said Christ\u2019s love is so powerful that it can even heal the spirit in addition to the body. The Psalm doesn\u2019t say accidentally, \u201cI turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation.\u201d Scot suggested that someone who wants to reconcile with Christ and the Church to receive spiritual healing through the Sacrament of Confession.