Funerals for Catholics who choose assisted dying left to priests' discretion, archbishop says

Ottawa's archbishop says that while medically assisted death is a "grave moral evil," it's up to the discretion of Catholic priests to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether to grant funerals to parishioners who chose to end their lives.

"We pray for the dead and we pray for the living. There are nuances in all of these cases and pastoral decisions are made by our priests. We have to give them guidelines but there's a kind of a suppleness and a flexibility within those things," Terrence Prendergast told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning on Friday.

Funerals are as much for the bereaved as for the dead, Prendergast said, and in cases where relatives may have disagreed with someone's decision to end their life, a priest might decide to grant a funeral for the sake of the relatives.

But in cases where families want medically assisted death to be accepted by the church, Prendergast said funerals can't be allowed to occur.

"I think if somebody said, 'Our mother died by taking her own life and we want this funeral to be proof that the church approves of this,' well, we can't do that."

More palliative care, emotional support needed

Prendergast said he understands physical suffering can be unbearable, but said people in pain nearing the end of their lives are often depressed about their situations and need more support.

"Much of the suffering, oftentimes, is mental, emotional, spiritual. And I think one of the things I see when I visit nursing homes is people are abandoned by their families. Nobody visits them, they have a very difficult part of life," he said.

"And I think that one of the things we need to do is we need to be more present to people at the end of life, and to accompany them and to be with them.

"... Our position is that palliative care is really the solution to this particular difficulty. It's not as widely available as it should be, and I think this is one of the things that we would like to encourage our government to do, to make palliative care available."

Listen to the full interview with Archbishop Terrence Prendergast here.

'Grave moral evil'

Prendergast said he believes he and other members of the church need to communicate more with Catholics considering medically assisted death.

"It seems to me that there's a contradiction ... in somebody saying, 'I want to end my life and I want a Catholic funeral.' Well, why would you want that? They're contradictory," he said.

"They may be Catholics who belong to the church and participate somewhat, perhaps only occasionally, perhaps regularly, but have not really imbibed the teaching of our Lord. And I think that's really one of my tasks, is to communicate that to them, that this is a grave moral evil.

"We can understand that there is suffering and we can understand that their is pain, but this is not the answer to that pain. ... Life is sacred and it's received from God and it's given back to God at the time that God chooses, not our choosing. I cannot kill somebody else and I cannot kill myself, that's the meaning of the commandment thou shalt not kill."