Is Assisted Suicide More Merciful Than God?

"Every Catholic should have a basic understanding of the Church’s teaching on suffering so as not to fall for assisted suicide’s masquerade as an improvement on God’s plan."

From Crisis

By Patti Armstrong

Assisted suicide encourages a global participation in rejecting Jesus as the Messiah in its denial of redemptive suffering.

There is supernatural power in suffering beyond our understanding. But the fear of suffering has become a weapon in the devil’s toolbox to increasingly drive state-abetted suicide as an improvement on God’s plan.

On December 12, Illinois became the 12th state to enact legislation to provide terminally ill patients with an exit ramp from life through physician-assisted suicide. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s December 17 announcement revealed that New York is lined up to be unlucky state number 13 (along with the District of Columbia). 

A Merciful Option?

In the New York newspaper Times Union, Hochul described the measure as simply speeding up the inevitable, since they will only accept terminal patients with no more than six months to live. She calls it “a merciful option, for those in pain,” ignoring that there are measures for pain relief and compassionate care.  

Reflecting on the issue during a Catholic funeral Mass, Hochul shared, “I was taught that God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we be. This includes permitting a merciful option to those facing the unimaginable and searching for comfort in their final months in this life.”

Hochul is confused. She refers to God as merciful and claims we must be merciful as well; but she extrapolates that to mean we should play God and define mercy in our own terms.  

Saying that for us to be merciful we must help people to die is to claim that God’s mercy is insufficient and, thus, we should take matters into our own hands. 

But if God is so merciful, then why does He permit suffering? Every Catholic should have a basic understanding of the Church’s teaching on suffering so as not to fall for assisted suicide’s masquerade as an improvement on God’s plan. Nowhere in the Bible did Jesus instruct us to skip over suffering to meet up with Him sooner in the next life.  

A Year-Long Holy Week

In Michelle Duppong: Hope in the Depths of Suffering that I authored along with Stephanie Parks, we looked at the life of Servant of God Michelle Duppong and how she used her cancer diagnosis not just for her own holiness but to wrap those around her in the supernatural power of redemptive suffering to bring them closer to God. Stephanie is getting a master’s in theology with a focus on redemptive suffering. We ended the book with a chapter on its power, understanding that suffering scares most of us. So how do we make sense of it?

Michelle’s life clearly taught that through suffering the supernatural enters in, bringing with it real freedom and peace, not the sort legislated by scheduling a person’s death. When Michelle left the Cancer Center of America in the Chicago area to return home to North Dakota for hospice, it took four hours for staff at the hospital to say goodbye to her. Everyone knew and loved her. She had offered up her suffering in union with that of Jesus on the Cross and put herself at His disposal. The love poured out. 

She never stopped praying for healing, but she accepted God’s plan. Instead of fighting it, she united herself to it for the best possible outcome. I once heard a priest say that suffering without offering it up just hurts. But can we skip the hurt, as Hochul and other’s claim, without paying a price in some other way? Can we override God’s plan for our own, for a quick start into Heaven? How foolish such thinking is. 

Msgr. Thomas Richter was rector of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit and Michelle’s spiritual director when she became the director of faith formation for the Bismarck Diocese after eight years as a FOCUS missionary. He administered last rites to Michelle mere days before she died at age 31 on Christmas in 2015, and he presided over her funeral Mass. At the end, Michelle still prayed for healing. So why did God refuse her a miracle? 

“We need to understand that the last year of Michelle’s life was her Holy Week,” Msgr. Richter explained during his funeral homily. “She experienced a twelve-month Holy Week. This painful experience was not an interruption to her mission of evangelization; it was a continuation and, in fact, the fulfillment of her work of evangelization.” 

“We make sense of Michelle’s suffering the way we make sense of all suffering: through the suffering and death of Jesus, His paschal mystery,” Msgr. Richter said. 

Jesus, the innocent one, was not preserved from suffering and death. Michelle’s innocent suffering was a share in Jesus’. She suffered not because she was distant from Jesus. He was close to her, and she was close to Him. He was loving her, and she was loving Him at the Cross. Redemptive suffering is not the experience of someone who is alone and unloved but of someone who has drawn so near to God that just as Jesus’ suffering and death brought the saving and healing love of God to us, so does that happen through the person’s nearness to Jesus. Michelle was not alone and unloved; she was near God. We can see in her another Christ.

“Jesus did not save the world when He was healing people and performing miracles,” Msgr. Richter noted.

Salvation came to us on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. I think how we interpret this last year of Michelle’s life determines whether we actually believe that, especially in our own lived experience of suffering. Do we believe the mysterious suffering experienced by Michelle in the last year of her life was an interruption or a fulfillment of her mission? As a fruit of her being close to Jesus or forgotten by Him? These are the questions every person must confront when confronting his own cross. 

Was there suffering? For sure. But in the midst of this it was very clear in Michelle that she grew in her concern for others, and she grew in great trust of God. She was sharing in the paschal mystery of Jesus.

Making Up for What Is Lacking

St. Paul expressed his understanding of redemptive suffering: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Colossians 1:24). 

As noted in the book, this might seem like a puzzling statement: Is there something “lacking” about Jesus’ work on the Cross? Of course not. Nothing about Christ’s offering was lacking. What St. Paul means is that the salvation of the world is still not yet complete because time is still unfolding and people are still being redeemed as they come to know and accept Jesus’ salvation through faith in this life. Our suffering, when offered to Jesus, can call down grace to soften someone’s heart toward God; it can bring about an encounter with God that can spark conversion.

Just as our prayers for others are heard by God and incorporated into His loving action in the world, so, too, is our suffering incorporated into His plan of salvation when we offer it to Him. Our suffering is not meaningless. When we suffer, we are, in fact, “carrying out an irreplaceable service” for the kingdom of God. 

The Church teaches that suffering is an experience of evil, and God cannot will evil. But theologians make the distinction between God’s active will and His permissive will, or what He allows to happen. For example, He does not expressly will that someone get cancer, but, in His mysterious ways, He can permit the laws of nature to produce such an illness; and He can bring about greater transformation and grace through it. 

Even Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, cries out for the suffering allowed by God to be removed; and yet He surrenders Himself to God’s will: “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). How often these words must have been on Michelle’s heart, in imitation of her beloved Jesus. 

Even in her acceptance of God’s will for her, Michelle did not cease praying for healing. Her family gathered around her every night to pray together for her healing. Holding on to great hope, they also submitted themselves to God’s permissive will, trusting that if God did not heal her, He would bring about a greater victory. 

Assisted suicide is not a greater victory. It is a rejection of God’s will. Hochul was correct that God is merciful. So, rejecting God’s plan to replace it with our own will is rejecting God’s mercy in ways we cannot fully understand in this world. It moves us away from Him and more into ourselves. We are not our own savior, and assisted suicide is not God’s plan for us.