The word ‘euthanasia’ is a euphemism invented from Greek words for ‘good death’. It is therefore a fantasist invention, for there is no such thing as a ‘good death’. Death is unnatural, a product of the Fall. Similarly, there is no such thing as a ‘dignified death’, as secularists also like to call it. Death is never dignified, for death, like life itself, always involves suffering. Forty years ago a bishop whom I met (who also had a secular training as a doctor) called ‘euthanasia’ a euphemism for murder. And that is what it is.

Herein is the essential difference between the Christian world-view and the secularist world-view. This latter includes the world-view of those who may call themselves Christians, like a former Archbishop of Canterbury, who are essentially secularists and not Christians. The Christian world-view accepts suffering because it is the result of sin and even sees how it can be positive. Secularism, however, does not recognize sin and therefore rejects suffering. The result of this is that secularism also rejects the Resurrection, but, therefore, ironically has to accept death, to which it has no answers.

Here we do not reject the use and usefulness of painkillers. We also reject the secularist concept of keeping the dying alive artificially. Death is inevitable and there is no such thing as ‘saving’ someone’s life, only of extending someone’s life. But we clearly realize that the real reason behind the introduction of State-sponsored euthanasia is not a humanistic desire to curtail human suffering, but to curtail State health budgets. The hospital chimneys of the secularist world already belch out smoke from the millions of babies slaughtered every year. Now, with the economic Nazism of ‘euthanasia’, the crematoria of the secularist world are going to be working overtime too.