Brothers and Sisters,

A child does not lose his right to live because he is suffering. An elderly woman does not lose her right to live because she needs someone to feed her. An unborn baby does not become disposable because the circumstances of his conception are painful, or because a medical examination suggests that his life will be difficult.

Yet increasingly we are asked to accept precisely this: that deliberately ending an innocent human life can become an act of compassion, a medical service, or a fundamental right.

Today I want to speak about the sanctity of human life, and about developments that should awaken every Christian conscience. In the Netherlands, a regulatory change that took effect in 2024 extended the framework for the deliberate ending of children’s lives to terminally ill children below the age of twelve, under specified conditions. Here in the United States, some jurisdictions have no gestational limit in their abortion laws.

These are matters of life and death. They concern children who cannot protect themselves, mothers who may be frightened and alone, and sick people who need to know that their dependence will never cancel their worth.

We must understand what the laws actually say. We must also understand something more fundamental: a government can change a law, but it cannot change the moral nature of an act.

A legislature cannot make an innocent person cease to be our neighbor. And it cannot release us from the commandment of God: “Thou shalt not kill.”

Life belongs to God

The Book of Genesis tells us: “And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). 

Here is the foundation of human dignity. Every human person is made in the image of God. That dignity does not begin when someone else wants us. It does not depend on our intelligence, our strength, our usefulness, or our ability to speak.

If dignity depended on independence, every infant would lack it. If it depended on clear thinking, a person would lose it during unconsciousness. If it depended on economic productivity, we would have to ask whether the retired, the disabled and the dying had become less human.

But none of those things make a person human. And the absence of any of those things cannot make a human person disposable. 

Our lives are entrusted to us. We are responsible for them before God. We have a duty to care for our health, to seek appropriate treatment, and to protect those entrusted to our care. We do not possess an unlimited authority to destroy ourselves or another innocent person.

The helplessness of a child creates a duty in the adult who can protect him. The confusion of an elderly parent creates a responsibility in the son or daughter who can still understand. Weakness makes a claim upon our love.

Remember the question that follows the death of Abel. God asks Cain where his brother is. Cain answers: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

That question still confronts us. Will we recognize responsibility for the vulnerable person before us? Or will we invent reasons why his life is outside our concern?

God’s answer to Cain includes these terrible words: “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to me from the earth” (Genesis 4:10).

What the world conceals, God sees. What a legal document permits, God still judges. The person without a voice on earth is never without a witness in heaven.

What changed in the Netherlands

Let us consider the Netherlands carefully. 

Its existing euthanasia law permits requests beginning at age twelve, subject to conditions. For children aged twelve to fifteen, parental or guardian consent is required. For those aged sixteen or seventeen, parents or guardians must be involved, but their consent is not required.

The 2024 change concerns younger children. The Dutch government’s explanation describes a separate framework for terminally ill children aged one to twelve. It requires unbearable suffering without prospect of improvement, and no reasonable way to relieve that suffering, including through palliative care. Doctors decide with the parents; the child is consulted where possible. Cases undergo review, and findings go to the public prosecution service. 

We must describe that accurately. The rule does not authorize the killing of every disabled child. Disability alone is not the stated criterion. Nor should we pretend that the legal framework contains no procedures or conditions. 

But those conditions do not answer the central moral question. Can anyone acquire the right to intend the death of an innocent child?

Our answer is no.

The suffering is real. The anguish of the parents can be almost beyond our imagining. We ought to speak of those families with compassion and humility. Anyone who has kept vigil beside a suffering child knows how inadequate easy words can be.

Yet the depth of that anguish cannot make the child cease to be someone whom we must protect. A parent’s love does not confer ownership over a child’s life. Medical knowledge does not confer moral authority to destroy it.

There is a profound difference between acknowledging that we cannot cure a child and deciding to bring about that child’s death.

When medicine reaches the limits of what it can cure, its duty of care remains. The child still needs relief, warmth, tenderness, and the presence of people who will remain faithful to him.

And the parents need help. They may need someone to stay through the night, to care for their other children, to make meals, to explain treatment choices, to pray with them, or simply to bear some part of the terrible burden.

Our opposition to euthanasia must be accompanied by a willingness to provide that help. A family should never have to wonder whether the people who defended their child’s life will disappear when the care becomes difficult.

We must also see what this development means for the argument about personal choice. A very young child cannot exercise adult autonomy. In these cases, other people are making a life-ending decision on the child’s behalf.

That is why the boundary matters. Once we grant that someone’s suffering can authorize another person to cause his death, we have crossed beyond the claim that an adult should be free to make a personal decision. We have allowed someone else to decide that death is the answer for a person who cannot make such a request.

For a Christian, the suffering child remains our neighbor to the final moment of his natural life.

Children and the limits of consent

Belgium also permits euthanasia for minors under conditions stricter than those for adults. Its health authority requires the child’s own voluntary, considered request, an assessment of the child’s understanding, agreement from legal representatives, death expected in the near term, and physical suffering that cannot be relieved. Psychiatric illness alone does not qualify a minor.

These distinctions matter. We should not confuse Belgium’s requirements with the Dutch framework for the youngest children.

But the moral prohibition is the same. Neither an adult’s request nor a child’s request can make the deliberate killing of an innocent person a good act.

We do not deny the reality of suffering when we say this. We affirm that the person who suffers remains worthy of protection.

Think of how carefully we ordinarily protect children in serious decisions. We recognize their vulnerability to fear, to the influence of adults, and to the desire to spare their parents pain. How much more careful must we be when the decision is irreversible?

And even where a person understands what is being requested, understanding does not settle morality. Human freedom is a great gift, but it does not create the difference between good and evil. We must use freedom in obedience to the truth. 

The Lord’s command to protect innocent life cannot be overturned by an agreement among the people involved.

The sick and the elderly

We must also speak precisely about consent at the end of life.

The Netherlands allows a written advance request to take the place of an oral request when a person later becomes unable to express his wishes, including in some cases of advanced dementia. 

Canada’s federal framework permits a waiver of final consent in certain circumstances involving a previously assessed and approved person whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable. It requires an earlier written arrangement, and expressed refusal or resistance after loss of capacity invalidates that arrangement. Canada also allows eligibility for some people whose deaths are not reasonably foreseeable, subject to additional safeguards. Old age or disability alone is not enough to establish eligibility.

Therefore we must distinguish the absence of consent at the moment of death from the absence of any previous consent. They are different claims. These laws do not simply give relatives unrestricted permission to kill elderly people.

However, the truth is serious enough. Under specified arrangements, a life-ending act may occur when the person can no longer give a present, competent answer.

For Catholics, an earlier request does not make euthanasia morally permissible. The sanctity of life remains even when memory fails, communication becomes difficult, or the patient has previously expressed despair.

The Book of Ecclesiasticus gives a striking instruction: “Son, support the old age of thy father, and grieve him not in his life; And if his understanding fail, have patience with him” (Ecclesiasticus 3:14-15).

If his understanding fail, have patience with him. 

Scripture speaks directly to the household caring for a confused patient. It knows that human weakness can be exhausting. It calls us to patience precisely where love has become costly.

An elderly person may fear becoming a burden. Our response must be more than a statement about policy. He needs to hear, and experience, that we will not abandon him.

We must take care with our own speech. Complaints about inconvenience, expenses, or interrupted plans can wound a dependent person deeply. We may never intend to pressure anyone, yet careless words can make someone feel that his disappearance would be a service to the family.

Caregivers need support too. Exhaustion is real. Asking for respite, nursing assistance, or help from relatives is responsible. We should organize that help before a family reaches collapse. 

The elderly are members of our families and of the Church. Their lives still have a place among us, even when their activities have narrowed to receiving care and offering a prayer.

Abortion and the absence of a gestational limit

Now let us turn to abortion here in the United States. 

There are jurisdictions where state law imposes no gestational limit. Colorado is an example. It enacted statutory protection for abortion in 2022 and added constitutional protection in 2024. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which supports abortion rights, describes Colorado as allowing abortion at all stages of pregnancy without a gestational limit.

That is the precise legal point behind the expression “abortion up to birth.” We must distinguish the absence of a statutory gestational cutoff from a claim that abortions immediately before delivery are routine, or that every provider performs them. Those are different assertions. Other states have viability rules and specified exceptions, and their laws must be described individually.

We cannot overlook the moral gravity of a legal framework that sets no gestational boundary for abortion. And we can acknowledge that a child’s increasing development makes his humanity harder for people to ignore. Yet the child’s right to life does not depend on having reached a stage at which others find him recognizable or emotionally compelling. 

The same child who is large enough to be seen clearly on an ultrasound was once too small to be seen without magnification. His dependence changed in degree. However, his identity as a living human being did not begin when someone first felt affection for him.

In the Gospel of St. Luke, the Blessed Virgin visits St. Elizabeth. St. Elizabeth says: “For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:44). 

The Gospel presents a child in the womb, and it records his response in the presence of the unborn Savior. Our Lord Himself entered human life through the womb of His Mother.

No Christian should treat that hidden life as beneath concern.

Nor can we reserve our concern for children whose futures seem easy. A prenatal diagnosis may change what a family must prepare for. It cannot change the child’s right to our love.

We should be especially attentive when parents are frightened by the possibility of disability. They need accurate information, patient counsel, and contact with people who understand the condition. They need to know that help will continue after the birth.

A child is never required to prove that he will be healthy enough to deserve protection.

What the popes taught

This teaching long predates today’s political divisions.

In his 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI condemned direct abortion. Speaking of mother and child, he wrote: “The life of each is equally sacred.” He praised doctors who work to preserve both lives and rejected appeals to public authority as a justification for the direct destruction of the innocent.

That is an essential point. The Church’s duty extends to the mother as fully as to her child. We must care about her health, her safety, and the circumstances that have left her frightened. Her suffering deserves serious help.

In his address to Catholic midwives on October twenty-ninth, 1951, Pope Pius XII taught that the right to life comes from God, including for the child still in the womb. He denied that parents, governments, medical expertise, or social and economic considerations can authorize the direct destruction of innocent human life, whether as an end or as a means.

Notice how firmly that principle answers the present debate. A desirable goal cannot justify choosing an intrinsically evil means. Relief of anguish, avoidance of expense, and fear of disability cannot turn the deliberate killing of the innocent into an act of justice.

Later papal teaching continued to condemn direct abortion and euthanasia. In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II reaffirmed these prohibitions and distinguished euthanasia from the legitimate refusal of disproportionate treatment.

We are dealing with a moral truth that does not change with elections, medical technology, or the vocabulary used in legislation.

Caring for the dying

At this point a distinction must be made clearly, because families can suffer great distress when it is overlooked.

The Church does not require every possible medical intervention in every situation. There can be treatments that no longer offer reasonable benefit or impose excessive burdens. Refusing such a treatment can be morally legitimate.

Pius XII explained the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means in his 1957 address on prolonging life. The obligation to preserve life does not mean an unlimited obligation to undergo every procedure medicine can devise.

A family may face a decision about another invasive intervention for a person already dying. The proper question concerns the treatment’s likely benefit and burden in that person’s actual circumstances. It does not concern whether the patient’s life still has value.

We must never confuse allowing death from an underlying illness with choosing death as the purpose of an action or omission. 

Ordinary care remains due. Food and water should not be withheld for the purpose of causing death; particular situations in which they cannot be effectively received or impose grave burdens require careful medical and moral assessment. Appropriate comfort, cleanliness, pain relief, and human presence must continue.

Properly administered pain relief is also different from euthanasia. Its purpose is to relieve suffering. The drugs and doses must be medically proportionate, and death must never be chosen as the means of obtaining relief. The Church does not require a dying person to endure avoidable agony.

Because individual cases can be complicated, families should seek competent medical advice and sound Catholic moral guidance. It helps to do this early, when people can still think and speak calmly.

Bring the priest. Ask for the sacraments. Make room for prayer. Help the patient reconcile with God and with those he loves.

We should prepare for death as Christians, with the hope of eternal life and a conscience attentive to God’s law.

Suffering and the Cross

We cannot speak honestly about this subject without facing suffering.

Suffering can be terrible. It can exhaust a family, disturb sleep, strain faith, and make the future feel unbearable. We ought never to offer glib explanations to a person living through it. 

Our Lord did not remain distant from human suffering. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He healed the sick. He endured His Passion and died upon the Cross.

The Crucifix teaches us that a suffering life has not been abandoned by God. Christ is present to the person whose weakness seems to have stripped away every earthly consolation. 

That truth gives a Christian reason to remain, to pray, and to care even when we cannot cure. It never gives us permission to neglect pain or refuse appropriate help.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the wounded man cannot solve his own predicament. Another person must stop, approach him, tend his wounds, and arrange for continued care.

Our Lord ends that parable with a command: “Go, and do thou in like manner” (Luke 10:37).

That command belongs in every discussion of the sanctity of life. It asks what we will do for the person whose life we defend.

Perhaps our task is to accompany a pregnant mother to an appointment. Perhaps it is to visit a nursing home faithfully, to help a family pay for care, or to give an exhausted parent a few hours of rest.

The act may seem small. To the person receiving it, it can be the evidence that he has not been forgotten.

Repentance and mercy

There may be someone listening who has been involved in abortion. There may be someone who encouraged a relative toward euthanasia, or who now fears that a decision about a loved one’s care was wrong.

Hear this clearly: do not allow shame to keep you from God.

The Church must speak truthfully about grave sin. She must also call sinners to repentance with the confidence that Christ’s mercy is real.

If you have committed a grave sin, seek a priest. Make a sincere confession. Ask for help to understand your responsibilities and to make whatever reparation is possible.

The objective evil of an act and the personal culpability of an individual are not identical questions. Knowledge, freedom, fear, pressure, and other circumstances matter in assessing responsibility. God knows the whole truth of a soul.

Some people have carried wounds for years. Others were pressured, misled, threatened, or abandoned. The response must include patient pastoral care, never ridicule or public humiliation.

Repentance is a return to the Father. It opens the way to forgiveness and a changed life.

We should pray for doctors and lawmakers as well. We should work for their conversion, and for the conversion of our own hearts. A Catholic must never answer violence against the vulnerable with threats or violence against anyone else.

Our weapons are truth, prayer, lawful action, and the works of mercy. 

What we must do

My dear faithful, it is possible to hear all of this, feel disturbed, and then return to our routines. We must ask more of ourselves.

Begin with prayer. Pray the Rosary for unborn children, for their mothers and fathers, for the sick and the dying, and for those who care for them. Offer sacrifices for the conversion of those who promote the deliberate destruction of innocent life.

Learn the facts before repeating a story. A false accusation can discredit a true moral witness. Read the law, distinguish a proposal from an enacted measure, and distinguish an abuse from what the law authorizes. Fidelity to the truth strengthens our defense of life.

Take responsibility for someone close to you. Is there an elderly relative who rarely receives a visit? A mother who needs practical help? A family caring for a disabled child? A person recovering from a serious illness who has become isolated?

Choose a concrete work of mercy and make it a regular obligation. Arrange it with others so the burden does not fall upon one exhausted person.

Support institutions and caregivers who remain faithful to the dignity of their patients. Encourage young people considering medicine, nursing, and the care of the elderly. We need professionals with knowledge, courage, and consciences formed by the law of God.

And use lawful civic means to defend innocent life. Laws teach as well as permit. When a society presents the deliberate ending of an innocent life as a solution, it shapes the expectations of patients, families, and the generations that follow.

The Christian must remain able to say that a law is unjust, even when it is popular. We owe our neighbors that witness.

We owe it especially to those who cannot ask for it.

Closing and prayer

One day every one of us will depend upon others. We may need another person to lift us, wash us, or speak on our behalf. Already, every one of us has lived through a time when we could do none of those things for ourselves.

Our worth did not have to be earned then. It will not have to be earned at the end.

The child in the womb, the child in the hospital bed, the adult with a profound disability, and the elderly person who has forgotten familiar names all remain human persons made in God’s image.

May we have the courage to defend them publicly, and the charity to care for them personally.

The law of God still binds us. His mercy still calls us. And the vulnerable person before us still needs our love. 

Let us pray.

Almighty and eternal God, Thou art the Author of life and the Lord of the living and the dead. Forgive the sins by which we have despised Thy gifts and failed to protect the innocent.

Protect children in their mothers’ wombs. Strengthen mothers and fathers in fear and distress. Sustain families caring for children who are gravely ill. Comfort the disabled, the elderly, and the dying, and raise up faithful people to remain beside them.

Grant wisdom and courage to physicians and nurses. Convert the hearts of lawmakers. Bring to repentance those who have participated in the destruction of innocent life, and grant them the grace to trust in Thy mercy.

Give us patience when love becomes difficult. Keep us faithful to Thy commandments. Prepare us to receive the sacraments and to meet Thee with a contrite heart at the hour of our own death.

Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Our Lady, Mother of Mercy, pray for us.

St. Joseph, patron of a happy death, pray for us.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland

Bishop Emeritus