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HAMILTON, Ontario, Canada (ChurchMilitant.com) - The president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) is calling Canada's recent legalization of assisted suicide — called "mercy killing" — "a false act of mercy and a distortion of kindness."

In a statement published Monday on the CCCB website, Bp. Douglas Crosby, OMI, says the "Bishops of Canada hope and pray" that fellow Canadians may recognize each person's dignity regardless of "that person's state, level of comfort or degree of productivity and societal contribution."

Crosby, the ordinary of Hamilton, spoke on behalf of the CCCB condemning parliament's recent passage of Bill C-14, which legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide. The president of the CCCB railed against the new law.

"No institution, person, ideology or legislation is entitled to threaten or undermine the sacredness of both the dignity of each individual person and the very gift of life itself," he insisted. He referred to the passage of the bill as an "appalling landmark decision" testifying to an "utter failure of government."

Crosby called out the false compassion behind the bill. "Declaring physician-assisted suicide a 'right' is not true caring and not humane in the least. It is ultimately a false act of mercy, a distortion of kindness to our fellow man/woman."

The statement echoes words of Pope Francis, who earlier this month called assisted suicide "false mercy." The Holy Father told the Medical Association of Spain gathered in Rome, "True compassion does not marginalize, humiliate or exclude and doesn't celebrate the passing away of a patient. No, this is the triumph of selfishness of the 'culture of disposability' that rejects people who do not meet certain standards of health, beauty or utility."

Bishop Crosby noted the approved bill "has now enshrined in law that killing is a respectable way to end suffering" and suggests "that the lives of vulnerable, chronically ill and disabled persons are not worth living."

"True human compassion," he relates, "invites us to share the other's pain. ... [It] is not meant to do away with the person."

On behalf of his fellow bishops, His Excellency again confirms,

The intentional taking of any human life — be it an elderly person, a child, a vulnerable adult, an embryo, a dying person — is truly a grave and morally unjustifiable act. Our society needs to reject all offenses against life itself: murder, genocide, suicide, abortion, euthanasia and physician-assisted dying.

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