''What they are wanting to do in terms of euthanasia is dictate to people who are suffering the indignity and pain of a terminal illness that they shall suffer and to deprive those persons of their ability to ask their doctors to, with their families, help them have a dignified end when there is no hope of recovery,'' Senator Brown told ABC television.

He said a similar majority of voters supported legalised abortion and same-sex marriage - two other policies advocated by the Greens but opposed by the Catholic Church.

''I welcome the Catholic Church or the Presbyterian Church or the Buddhists or anyone having a say in that - we are a free and open democracy - but it really opens up to public attention the fact that the Greens are a 21st-century party trying to drag the other parties out of their last-century thinking on so many issues.''

Senator Brown was responding to a pointed election guide the church is sending to Victoria's 488 Catholic schools and 300-plus parishes, which urges Catholics to ask election candidates: ''Will you oppose any attempt to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide, whatever it may be called? What is your attitude towards abortion?''

Archbishop Hart told The Age the church did not want to ''bucket'' any political party, but said: ''Our society will be judged by how we treat our weakest and most vulnerable - those in the womb and those who are very, very old.''