BELGIUM: Brothers of Charity, Catholic psychiatric hospitals to provide euthanasia

euthanasia_syringeA couple times lately, in reaction to a seriously messed up claim (HERE) about downward trend of priestly vocations and how wonderful everything would be if only we could throw off the bad stuff that Vatican II tried to get rid of, I’ve mentioned Belgium. Belgium: a place where the liberal agenda has worked so well for the Church that now only 5% of Catholics go to Mass.

This is a really disturbing sign of the times. Once again, dear readers, Belgium.

From BioEdge:

Belgian Catholic psychiatric hospitals ‘adjust’ their view of euthanasia

One of the last substantial barriers to increasing the number of euthanasia cases for non-terminally-ill psychiatric patients in Belgium seems to have crumbled.

A religious order in the Catholic Church, the Brothers of Charity, is responsible for a large proportion of beds for psychiatric patients in Belgium – about 5,000 of them. The international head of the order, Brother René Stockman, is a Belgian who has been one of the leading opponents of euthanasia in recent years.

Nonetheless, in a surprise move this week, the board controlling the institutions of the Brothers of Charity announced that from now on, it will allow euthanasia to take place in their psychiatric hospitals. [I wonder what the local bishops and the CDF have to say about this.]

In a statement posted on their website the Brothers of Charity explain the policy shift. “We take seriously unbearable and hopeless suffering and patients’ request for euthanasia. On the other hand, we do want to protect lives and ensure that euthanasia is performed only if there is no more possibility to provide a reasonable perspective to treat the patient.”

Euthanasia for psychiatric patients has already happened dozens of times in Belgium. But from now on it will probably be easier for people suffering from schizophrenia, personality
disorders, depression, autism, or loneliness to access it. In fact, it will be hard to find an institution in Belgium where euthanasia is not being offered as an option.

[…]

The liberal agenda has been such a great success.

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19 Comments

  1. AnnTherese says:

    The suffering that severe mental illness causes is heartbreaking. Thank you for reminding us to held these people in prayer, especially those who have been abandoned, are untreated, and often homeless.

    I don’t support euthanasia. However, as healthcare continues to be less available and more expensive, I can I magine euthanasia will one day become an encouraged option for the mentally ill, chronically ill, terminal, demented, and frail elderly.

  2. Spinmamma says:

    Every day it seems more and more as though we are living out Eugène Ionesco’s play “Rhinocéros.” It is appalling.

  3. JustaSinner says:

    So the Pope approves…

  4. capchoirgirl says:

    “Unbearable and hopeless suffering”? What does that even mean?
    There’s no such thing, with today’s pharmaceuticals, as “unbearable” suffering. There are medications of every sort to handle pain, if that’s what a patient wants.
    As far as the “hopeless” angle–isn’t that what the brothers are supposed to address? That no suffering is hopeless, and that it has meaning? I guess redemptive suffering and offering it up aren’t taught in Belgium.
    So, instead of working with people to alleviate their pain and helping them with loneliness and hopelessness, it’s just easier to kill them. Easier for who?

  5. aliceinstpaul says:

    Father, the “liberal” agenda has been a success. It is the work of Satan. This is the culmination of all his empty promises. Only Satan could make murder and suicide sound caring and sensible.

    He won’t have the final success, but we have many people to save from this evil.

  6. mysticalrose says:

    Wow. Just wow. This is actually one of the worst things that I have heard in this past 4 years (and counting) of seeming darkness. Obviously, a depressed person is not an accurate judge of whether or not life is worth it. I cannot think of a more harmful thing to do than to tell a mentally ill person — “You know what? you’re right. You are hopeless. Let’s just end this.” Absolutely diabolical.

  7. Phil_NL says:

    Indeed, capchoirgirl.

    Though frankly, in many of these cases it might seem the easy way out for the person in question too. That’s the horrible temptation, especially if one doesn’t believe in the hereafter.

    And it is the more gruesome that the newest frontier in euthanasia seems to be people with psychological and psychiatrical illness. That the internal logic of euthanasia (the patients has rationally decided he doesn’t want to live anymore) doesn’t apply – by definition – to people with severe mental issues: one cares not. Logic is a tool, dispensible when it doesn’t lead to the ‘right’ result.

    (Belgium, by the way, seems to take every bad idea coming out of the Netherlands and then double it 5 years later, alas. And in neither country have I heard a convincing reason why the application for euthanasia by itself would not be a clear indication of mental health issues, which in and of itself makes that “celebration of rational choice” moot and a farce.)

    Bl. Clemens August von Galen, ora pro nobis…

  8. gheg says:

    Insane. They should abandon their hospitals and burn them to the ground before they allow such a thing.

  9. Kathleen10 says:

    What a horror this is. I can hardly imagine this happening.
    I’m not sure if this is so, but Oregon (in the states) is supposedly advancing a bill to allow for the withdrawal of food and water from patients suffering dementia. As if what happened to poor Terry Schiavo wasn’t enough. Some people won’t rest until life is thrown away like tossing out paper towels. What evil people lurk in our world!
    We are going to see bills proposed again and again for these diabolical acts, and it’s up to good people to stand up and defend the vulnerable from them. Soon we will be the vulnerable!
    God help us, the world’s gone mad.

  10. Benedict Joseph says:

    This congregation was founded by Fr. Peter Joseph Triest in 1807 – he is often referred to as the Vincent de Paul of Belgium. He also founded the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary, the congregation featured in novel/movie “The Nun’s Story,” which sought to combine the Cistercian tradition with the Vincentian. Both communities were noted at one time for their groundbreaking care of the mentally ill.
    These congregations are falling like dominoes, but how can we be any longer surprised by anything. Following the lead of the Jesuits, metamorphosing into who knows what.

  11. aviva meriam says:

    This nightmare does not end……
    The weakest and frailest among us are unsafe.
    And where is the Leadership of the Church?

  12. Nicholas1978 says:

    Aviva Meriam, one can be sure the leadership of the church is and will be silent. What else? Most of the hierarchy and clergy, in my experience and observation (which is obviously limited) fall into one or more of these categories: heretics/apostates; careerists; spineless wimps. There are exceptions – good, holy, courageous men – but they are a minority. In fairness most “Catholic” laity are useless too. These are awful times and it takes heroism to keep the faith. My own faith hangs by a thread and such is the destruction of the Church’s credibility that it is easy to question the whole Christian narrative. But we must cling to the Faith blindly and pray without ceasing not to lose it no matter how evil or useless the powers that be are.

  13. Prayerful says:

    More of the usual Vatican II stuff. Belgian bishops were the most devoted supporters of V2 (eg Cardinal Suenens), and now we have its fruits with the killing of the mentally disabled. I cannot see how it differs from what the National Socialists did. Yet the Nazis rowed back after an outcry, no such concerns nowadays for modern eugenists and socialists. The latest Archbishop of Brussels closed the only seminary with new vocations because it trained priests to offer the Mass of All Time. Consider how Stéphane Mercier was disciplined by the ‘Catholic’ (lol) University of Louvain for opposing abortion. Most of Belgium’s bishops should be dismissed. Leave aside their heterodoxy and support for abortion, rather they are grossly incompetent. 5% is another word for failure.

  14. Nan says:

    From there it will be mandated that the inconvenient are euthanized.

  15. Stephen Matthew says:

    Once upon a time, religious orders that were unable to live out their rule and life would either resist to the last or move their institutions to a place that would permit them to live an authentic Catholic religious life. Once upon a time, a good number of orders fled anti-clerical or anti-Catholic governments and came to the new world. Now there is no where safe, but what should a faithful member of a religious community do when it makes a deal with the devil? Stay and hope for reform? Disregard their vows and forsake their brothers and go elsewhere? Religious life is intended to more closely conform to Christ, now there is no safety from service to the Prince of this World even there.

  16. Elizabeth M says:

    “hopeless suffering” Well, there you have it.
    Complete loss of the meaning and spiritual usefulness of suffering. How many on the other side will lament not going through just a few more days or hours of suffering to have some time in Purgatory taken off? Suffering is awful – physical, mental, spiritual, big or small, but it’s all meant to bring us closer to God and our neighbor. We’ve walked away from each other because suffering is ugly to watch.
    The less suffering, the less penance, the more the devil rules the world.

  17. Brusselscalling says:

    I live in Brussels. The situation here is unimaginable. This is just par for the course here. Please pray for us. Thank God we also have a thriving, growing, devout and – if I may use the word without being sacreligious – fun FSSP parish where we are trying brick by brIck by brick to restore what has been lost. After long months of preparation, our community will be conscrated to the Immaculate and Sorrowful Heart of Mary on 14 May.

  18. ChesterFrank says:

    Might that Church be guided by the state? For some reason I think of those laundries of Ireland, the state using the church or its benefit. Aka exploitation. Psychiatric care, aka behavioral health. Their mission is to change a persons behavior. The tools are hypnotic, psychotherapeutic drugs, isolation, and persuasion; and they get paid for it all. From consultation, to diagnosis, to treatment, to drug expense, to hospitalization, and now add the funeral. This is so wrong on so many different levels. “Behavioral health” has been used for political purpose as often as it has been used medically. The line is blurred simply by the definition of the profession; from medicine, to sociology, to politics. Even its diagnosis of illness is by popular opinion, it is statistics. What side of the statistics is a celibate man who prays over a piece of bread and claims it to become God? In todays society in twenty or so years? Those members of a religious order might want to rethink their position, for fear they might be cloistered by the members of that “medical profession’ they place so much trust.

  19. Sconnius says:

    Seems the Brothers are not on board:
    http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/religious-brothers-push-back-on-euthanasia-directive-for-catholic-hospitals-51607/?platform=hootsuite

    But the layman who they quote is absolutely off his rocker.

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