Respect life to the very end: Bishop Harris

Cath News – a Service of the Australian Catholic Bishops conference. Townsville Bishop Tim Harris advocated strongly against euthanasia in his weekend homily, saying it was important to have a conversation on the "grim" topic. Source: Townsville Bulletin.

Bishop Harris likened euthanasia to the Nazi Germany era and said it would diminish the value of life.

"It reminds me of Nazi Germany, these are some of the things that people did because if someone was not 100 per cent, crippled, if they had something wrong with them, if they were aged or not of use to society any more the state then would select certain people and say we'll experiment on you or we'll kill you because you're not worth anything," he said.

"I believe to assist someone to die in an intentional manner is clearly intentional killing and the church does not believe in intentional killing."

Instead, Bishop Harris said there should be more attention on improving palliative care services.

"A state-sanctioned voluntary assisted suicide can have all the safeguards it likes but even then things can go wrong, the best safeguard is not to do it," he said.