Dear Sisters, dear brethren in Christ, on Friday afternoon I took part in the funeral rites of Lewis Palmer whom all of you here today cannot fail to have known. Lewis, as his nephew Mgr Wadsworth said in his funeral homily, was a ‘one-off’, and I think I can speak for us all when I say that Mgr was absolutely right. He was born before the Second World War and became both an engineer and a carpenter, in both of which skills he excelled, as his many friends attested not least by their presence at his Requiem. Many of you will also remember Lewis’s wife, Anne, who died 18 months ago after a long illness. She, too, was a regular member of this Sunday congregation for many years. Anne was an amateur dramatics enthusiast, and I think that she passed on some of her theatrical skills to Lewis, especially the art of the stage whisper. Who will forget the experience of quiet moments on Sunday mornings here at Carmel with Lewis quietly booming out a word of explanation to Anne or a cheery ‘Peace be with you!’ to all around him, and which even the sisters in their secluded chapel must have heard?
Lewis was a faithful Catholic who had come into the Church in his mature adulthood, thanks to the wonderful example of his wife Anne. Week by week they came here together and it was moving to see this very practical man looking carefully and devotedly after his wife during her long and gradual decline. But what is so striking, and so pleasing to record, was the fact that after his wife had had to go to live in a care home, he did not stop coming to Mass, not even taking the odd week off, but then and after her death, until as little as a month ago, he was here, faithfully in his place in good time for Mass and always at the altar rail to receive his Lord in Holy Communion, and cheerily greeting all around with his booming tones of ‘Peace be with you!’
Now I mention all this for two reasons. First, I wanted to give a special mention to Lewis on this, the Sunday after his funeral, because with his passing, a very particular family connection going back years has now come finally to an end. Mgr Wadsworth’s widowed mother had come year by year to Mass with her sister Anne and her brother-in-law Lewis, until a stroke obliged her to go and live with her daughter near London shortly before Covid. She was eventually buried from here. Then Anne and Lewis carried on, and with Lewis’s death, Mgr Wadsworth’s family is no longer represented here for the first time since, I suspect, any of us here can recall.
The second reason is also connected with last Friday afternoon. For the good news was reported that, against many expectations, yet another Assisted Suicide Bill, following on from those sponsored first by an ex MP of this constituency, Rob Marris, and next by Kim Leadbeter, and this time by Lauren Edwards, had been defeated, which had hardly been anticipated by anyone in or near Parliament or the Media.
I mention this in the same bracket as Lewis Palmer for a very important reason. At the heart of the movement for assisted suicide is not true compassion, nor simply the desire to allow people to die with so-called ‘dignity’, but the culture of death, a culture that is based on a fundamental pessimism about human existence, and a lack of self-sacrifice. Human existence, say the supporters of assisted suicide, is about quality of life, and that quality can only be measured by freedom from incurable terminal sickness. This completely and deliberately ignores love. Love is the true antidote to the culture of death and to its pessimism. Love says that a person, even one gravely and terminally ill, is still loved no less and wanted as much as ever in this life, not least by God and therefore by us too. There is something deeply horrid about the idea that the best you can do for someone you claim to love, but who is terminally ill, is to kill them. Because that is what assisted suicide really means. The person who would be judged capable of deciding to die would be actually incapable of committing the act themselves, but would have to depend on someone else to do it for them. Hence, even if supposedly carried out at the will of the one who is deemed to be dying, it must still be carried out by someone else.
Lewis perfectly showed the quality of this kind of true love in his last years. He took seriously and ungrudgingly the words he had solemnly promised at his wedding to Anne, ‘in sickness and in health…until death do us part.’ Not for him the idea that love no longer meant caring for a sick, even a terminally sick spouse, to the end. It cost him, I know, day after day, week by week visiting Anne in her care home, where Anne herself suffered greatly. One kind of human reaction might have been to say, ‘you wouldn’t let a dog live like this’. But of course, a wife, a mother, is not a dog, nor any mere animal. She or he is loved by God and given to us by God to enable us to show our love too. The care we show to a seriously and terminally ill loved one is not wasted, is not in vain. It is to draw out of us the real depths of our ability to show love in the darkest of times and circumstances. Lewis soldiered on through all the personal pain that Anne’s vulnerability and sheer helplessness cost him as well as her. And that, I must say, was despite the care she was given, and not because she was in any way neglected.
It would have been so easy to say, ‘Anne is never going to get better, therefore it is a greater kindness to her to put her out of her misery and give her a merciful death, quickly and painlessly now.’ But thank God Lewis did not want to do that. And he would not have wanted to do so even if the option had been there. And that is what is so important about the defeat of the Assisted Suicide Bill. If the option to put to death someone like Anne existed, and there are very many people like Anne at any time, others might well feel tempted to take it. It is all very well to say that it is assisted suicide, not assisted murder we are talking about, and that the person who is ill must take the decision, not anyone else however closely related, but it is so obviously a danger that many people in that condition of illness and helplessness would be inclined in themselves to think, ‘I am a burden, I am causing my loved ones pain in my sickness; surely it is better that I get out of their way, even a duty to do so, so that I no longer cause them any pain through my own suffering, and therefore I should ask for assisted suicide.’ Nor does that even allow for a further detestable possibility in some cases that a relative of a sick person may even suggest, if only by a certain tone of speech, not even by actual words, that it would be better for everyone if you were to accept the inevitable and go gracefully now before it all gets too painful and long-drawn-out.
Such are the dangers that an assisted suicide bill would inevitably usher into our society, which is already deeply wounded by the death cult of legalised abortion. Although it has now been pushed back once more, we cannot doubt that it will not be long before someone else in Parliament has yet another go at doing what Marris, Leadbetter and Edwards have so far failed to do. We need to be vigilant, and we need to be prepared to do all in our power directly to care for those who are terminally ill, or who are just elderly. For I make this warning now: that if at some point in the near future assisted suicide becomes lawful, then there will be no barrier to all forms of assisted murder as well, full-on euthanasia, certainly not the artificial barrier of supposedly six months left to live. And there will be no limit to who can be eliminated by legalised murder either. So we cannot afford to relax. We must do our best for those whom we can care for, and make sure that others see our example and can be encouraged to join us in pushing back the culture of death and gradually pushing the barriers back in favour of the culture of life.
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