In Western states, new laws authorizing and regulating assisted suicide are spreading rapidly. A true ‘culture of death’ is taking root—as Pope John Paul II aptly named it years ago—yet to this day, a strong voice is lacking that would once again place the Catholic Church at the center of the debate and the fight in defense of life.
The Legislative Landscape of Euthanasia in the West
In Western countries, legislation surrounding euthanasia is highly diverse. Nations like the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, and Switzerland have legalized assisted suicide through regulations that set strict criteria and require medical oversight. In other countries, such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, only passive euthanasia is permitted, while active euthanasia remains either illegal or heavily debated. In other words, the State may provide the necessary medication to a person seeking to end their life, but it cannot directly carry out the act. In Italy, a long and complex process is underway to definitively decriminalize assisted suicide, driven by pressure from lobbying groups and progressive factions within the judiciary power—even with the approval of certain Catholic institutions, which, in theory, should defend life “from conception to natural death.”
As has already happened with other imposed health interventions (consider vaccinations), the obligation of a medical treatment is introduced in the name of the common good, resource rationalization, and system efficiency. The elderly or terminally ill who refuse euthanasia will end up being accused, more or less explicitly, of selfishness.
The legislative situation in China is also worth examining. In the communist empire, euthanasia is not legalized. However, this does not imply a defense of life by the regime. On the contrary, various surveys have shown that at least 70% of Chinese citizens support its introduction. When God is removed from society and man is reduced to an ant, what value does individual life hold? If a person can no longer function as a cog in the productive machinery of society, then that cog is deemed disposable. Professor Yan Sanzhong of Jiangxi University explained China’s situation as follows:
“China is not yet ready to legalize euthanasia. Due to the lack of a comprehensive social system, citizens still cannot choose how and when to die. The healthcare system is too concentrated in developed cities, making it difficult for hospitals in rural areas to be adequately prepared to make decisions of such magnitude. […] There is a risk that elderly individuals may decide to die in order to save money for their children, or conversely, that children may be tempted to kill their parents to escape the responsibility of caring for them.”
This terribly materialistic view of one’s own life and that of others is not far from what, now inexorably, is also creeping through the West. The final outcome, as we shall see, is identical: the State—whatever form it takes—must have the final say over the life and death of citizens. At this point, it would be more appropriate to call them subjects. This is biopolitics in its highest expression. The question to ask, at this point, is very simple: where is the Church in the face of the spread of these death-promoting laws?
Euthanasia: A Misleading Name
The first thing to consider is the name by which the regime’s propaganda presents and normalizes this practice. It is rarely called by its true name — State-sponsored suicide — which reveals its actual nature. Instead, it is called ‘euthanasia’, a term that in ancient Greek means “good death.” In truth, death is beautiful—that is, good or happy—only if it occurs in the grace of God. A death is in the grace of God when it is accompanied by holy resignation to the will of God, a politically incorrect virtue known which is the very heart of humility.
A truly happy death is also accompanied by the sacraments: the Anointing of the Sick, the Confession, and the Eucharist—depending on the circumstances. There is, therefore, an urgent need for devotion to Saint Joseph, patron of the Happy Death and vanquisher of its diabolical distortion, namely assisted suicide endorsed and facilitated by the State. Why is there such a strong push today to normalize, legalize, and codify assisted suicide throughout the West?
State-Sponsored Suicide and Revolution
The current phase of the Revolution is anthropological and, like every phase, it is composed of periods or processes that serve the purpose of reaching its ultimate goal. This anthropological phase of the Revolution consists in the subversion of man’s ordered relationship with his very own nature. The periods of this phase are threefold: man’s relationship with the environment (ecologism), with sexuality (gender ideology), and with technology (transhumanism). The aim of the Revolution is equality taken to its extreme—because in it lies the fulfillment of Satan’s promise in Eden, which also reveals the Revolution’s final cause, the ultimate end of the entire process: eritis sicut Deus—“you shall be like God.” The equality between man and God—apotheosis of Gnostic pride—is the driving force behind the entire history of the Revolution. How, then, does the culture of death fit within this big process?
It is the continuation of the previous phase of the Revolution—the social phase—which reached its peak in the so-called Sixty-Eight movement. That revolutionary phase also comprised various processes: the child against the father (rejection of authority), the wife against the husband – or viceversa (divorce), the mother against the child (abortion), and finally the State against the family (assisted suicide). The ultimate aim of the social phase of the Revolution is, indeed, the destruction of the family as the fundamental unit of society. Assisted suicide stands in continuity with this process—indeed, it represents the culmination of the social phase of Revolution, which will be completed when all of Western society, in its legal frameworks, will enshrine a law that justifies it.
The long-term consequences of the legal introduction of “passive euthanasia” — State-sponsored suicide — and “active euthanasia” — State-sponsored killing — are devastating and already before our eyes. What today is presented as a free individual choice will tomorrow become a systemic practice indifferent to consent, evolving from voluntary assisted suicide to mass suppression.
The acceptance of State-sponsored suicide can only occur in a context where the family—understood in the broadest and noblest sense, as the emotional, social, and economic foundation of the human person—has broken down. Without the family, the sick person is seen as a burden, and illness as a misfortune to be eradicated. If the fundamental unit of society is no longer the family but the State, then the sick person becomes an unproductive unit—an unnecessary cost, representing no valuable investment. Life is no longer a gift from God, but a mere utilitarian good, to be preserved only so long as it remains useful—or worse still, “dignified.”
In the Christian family, by contrast, the sick person can never be considered useless and takes on a twofold significance. First, a sapiential meaning: through suffering, the sick person gains a deeper understanding of life, faith, and human limitation, and can transmit this wisdom to others—often to younger generations. Second, a co-redemptive meaning: united to the suffering Christ, the sick person participates in the work of Redemption, offering his pain in expiation for the sins of his household and loved ones, for the triumph of the Church, and for the salvation of souls.
Two Paradoxes of the Culture of Death
This contemporary culture conceals two paradoxes that expose its deep incoherence. On the one hand, it proclaims an inflated notion of human dignity: the autonomous, self-sufficient, and self-determining individual is considered infinitely worthy, and therefore the bearer of unlimited rights. Let us not forget that dignity is the source of rights. Yet this same culture, when faced with illness and suffering, denies that dignity just as absolutely—going so far as to claim that the life of the sick person is “unworthy of being lived.”
The second paradox is even more staggering. Contemporary culture firmly rejects the death penalty for the most heinous criminals, invoking an “inalienable right” to life. Yet at the same time, it approves State-sponsored suicide for the innocent sick. It logically follows, then, that the right to life can be violated and denied in the presence of incurable suffering. A serial murderer is deemed worthy of life (at the taxpayer’s expense, in a State prison), while a terminal cancer patient is judged worthy of being poisoned. These are the consistent fruits of the Revolution.
What the Church Teaches on State-Sponsored Suicide
The movement to raise public awareness, normalize, and legalize State-sponsored suicide was halted in the West—at least for a time—thanks in part to the decisive action of Pope John Paul II during the 1980s and 1990s. This is clear proof that the Church, when it so wills, can play a significant role in halting the revolutionary process. Yet it is not enough to merely stop the Revolution; it is necessary to begin the Counter-Revolution—which, as Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira said, “is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of the Revolution.”
The most explicit and important recent declarations of the Holy See on State-sponsored suicide date to May 5, 1980, with the Iura et Bona Declaration; March 25, 1995, with Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium vitae; and July 14, 2020, with the Samaritanus bonus letter issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Today, however, the landscape shows, on one side, the revolutionaries, who either press the accelerator or apply the brakes depending on the pace they wish to impose. All of them, nonetheless, are firmly determined to drive the vehicle of history along the road to perdition. On the other side, the so-called conservatives have no greater ambition than to slam on the brakes—but in doing so, all they achieve is to keep the car stationary on the wrong road, merely awaiting the next driver to resume the fatal journey.
We do not need brakes, but counter-revolutionaries who know how to accelerate or decelerate along the path of true reform and salvation. The problem is not primarily one of speed, but of direction. John Paul II and Benedict XVI provided many tools to resist and slow the tide, but no one after them has taken hold of the wheel to steer and accelerate along the right road. On the contrary—the course of events, sadly, is well known.
The most explicit and important recent declarations of the Holy See on State-sponsored suicide date to May 5, 1980, with the Iura et Bona Declaration; March 25, 1995, with Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium vitae; and July 14, 2020, with the Samaritanus bonus letter issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The mentioned encyclical is an authoritative document of the ordinary Magisterium that condemns this practice along with others normalized by the prevailing culture, all of which constitute a grave offense against the fifth commandment of God (murder, genocide, abortion, voluntary suicide). We recall that this encyclical invokes papal infallibility, as the Author himself suggests:
“By the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart, is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.” (EV, 57)
In this way, John Paul II declared the infallibility, and therefore the irreformability, of the Church’s traditional moral teaching about direct killing in all its forms. Direct killing is the deliberate act of ending a life, used either instrumentally or as a final objective. Since suicide is defined as the killing of oneself, clearly the infallible declaration also extends to it, if voluntary. Moreover, since so-called euthanasia “involves, depending on the circumstances, the malice proper to suicide or murder,” it is evident that this initial declaration also extends as a condemnation to State-sponsored suicide.
Moreover, John Paul II declared with those words that the condemnation of murder in all its forms—from abortion to euthanasia, including suicide and genocide—is founded on natural law, even before Revelation—Sacred Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium. This has very important implications for the Church and for modern man.
Confronted with the evident challenges faced by priests—and even theology professors—in articulating the reasons behind what should be self-evident to a humanity that is not merely atheistic, but deprived of the spiritual sensitivity to evil and sin, the Pope encouraged a deeper exploration of the topic through a form of dialogue that precedes religious categories, making it more accessible and meaningful to the post-modern world.
This is true genocide perpetrated by the State, with the tacit consent of a society now anesthetized, having lost the sacred sense of life and the duty of care. Does no one have the courage to denounce and condemn this evil—not even in the Catholic Church?
The world still needs—though it may not realize it—an authoritative magisterial document that fully outlines the causes, essence, and remedies of the culture of death, particularly assisted suicide. A clear and solemn word from the Pope on this matter could, if not reverse the course of the ongoing revolutionary legislative process, at least inspire a common front of resistance. In this, John Paul II acted successfully. We still need the same today.
The terrible long-term consequences
The long-term consequences of the legal introduction of “passive euthanasia” — State-sponsored suicide — and “active euthanasia” — State-sponsored killing — are devastating and already before our eyes. What today is presented as a free individual choice will tomorrow become a systemic practice indifferent to consent, evolving from voluntary assisted suicide to mass suppression.
This is not alarmism, but the typical dynamic of modern States. As has already happened with other imposed health interventions (consider vaccinations), the obligation of a medical treatment is introduced in the name of the common good, resource rationalization, and system efficiency. The elderly or terminally ill who refuse euthanasia will end up being accused, more or less explicitly, of selfishness.
Data already confirm this: in Spain, in 2025 alone, over 1,300 cases were carried out, with more than 40% of requests approved. The loosening of regulations is expanding worldwide the pool of people invited, persuaded, and accompanied to suicide or to consent to being killed by the national health service. In the Netherlands, a five-year government-commissioned study found that in 2021 alone, 517 people were euthanized without explicitly requesting it or giving explicit consent. This is true genocide perpetrated by the State, with the tacit consent of a society now anesthetized, having lost the sacred sense of life and the duty of care. Does no one have the courage to denounce and condemn this evil—not even in the Catholic Church?
