Northern Territory plan to legalise euthanasia threatens every Australian, say bishops PERTH, WA: February 23, 1995
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E NORTHERN Territory proposal to legalise euthanasia threatens every Australian, the Australian Bishops Conference said this week. "This Bill would allow directly intended killing," they said in a statement of solidarity with Bishop Ted Collins who stood in protest last Tuesday night outside the NT parliament. "Even worse than that, it offers scant assurance that the killing would be restricted only to those who might freely request it." The legislation titled "Rights of the Terminally Ill" is misnamed said the bishops. "The legislation does not enshrine, but actually ignores basic human rights. Most Australians see human life as sacred and want to live in a country which respects and defends that basic value. "The Bill is not about providing treatments which ease suffering but may shorten life. It is not about ceasing burdensome and futile treatment. "Those who oppose this legislation show genuine concern for the terminally ill. They know that the dying need love and specialised care and that this Bill offers nothing but a threat to their security and sense of belonging. "The Bill does not address the current lack of palliative care available to terminally ill Territorians. Instead it is a proposal to withdraw the protection of the law from a vulnerable group of our fellow Australians." Ministers of Christian Churches protest letter See Page 3
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Responding to new challenges -.1110,6a.1•••1.1•S
E CHURCH will always r respond to new challenges, Archbishop Hickey said last Sunday as the Sisters of St John of God celebrated their 100 years in Australia. "We can he sure God will call forth today lay people and others who will show people that Christ loves them," the archbishop told the congregation that packed St Joseph's church for the centenary Mass. Changes in insurance and other factors meant corporate changes in which responsibility was being handed on to lay people, the archbishop noted. Although the change was inevitable, he said, there were good people responding to today's needs, moving into the field of special services in response to today's needs just as the Sisters had responded to the needs of yesterday. The Sisters of St John of God arrived at the turn of the century in the second great wave of Catholic expansion in WA, coinciding with the gold discoveries and the subsequent economic development, with the Sisters going to Coolgardie to nurse miners suffering from water shortages and typhoid. The Christian Brothers and the Oblates had just celebrated their arrival in the same period. The St John Sisters tarted a school in Kalgoorlie in 1895 and by 1907 had started work in the Kemberleys. The other waves of expansion, the archbishop noted, were the early arrival of Mercy Sisters and Benedictines with the founding bishop, the wave of migration after World War II, and the post Vatican II era of change in which the Church is still coming to terms with the modern world.
St John of God provincial superior Sister Corona Gainford is all smiles as she cut the centenary cake shortly after Premier Richard Court had unveiled a plaque to commemmorate the Sisters' 100 years of service to WA.