Priest refuses to do funeral after euthanasia
Although euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 2002, all of a sudden a priest from Noord-Brabant has decided he won’t perform a funeral for someone who has been euthanised.
The family feels punished by the local church and has had to go to another church to hold their loved one’s funeral. The priest claimed he is just following orders set by the diocese and is also telling his colleagues not to handle funerals of the euthanised. His church says that they can understand his reluctance, but not finding a replacement is wrong, and are looking into it. The church also expects some apologies to be given to the family and that the priest might lose his job.
The local churchgoers are pissed that this could happen and are not so generous in giving their church funds to fix the organ all of a sudden.
(Link: trouw.nl, Photo by Johan Wieland, some rights reserved)
Idiotic and shameful! FORCE a priest who believes in and abides by the Catholic church’s teaching of the sanctity of life from beginning to the very end (however that is to come – naturally!). NL is becoming more and more a police state. Let the money come from elsewhere…if they want to kill themselves and/or their “loved” ones – go to a church that does such things. Don’t force the Catholic church to your ways — it is not a democracy!
Hmm, last time I checked we lived in a democracy.