The Bishops' Conference of Scotland

Last year we alerted you to a bill in the Scottish Parliament to introduce assisted suicide for citizens in Scotland aged 16 and over. We urged you to contact your MSPs, asking them to reject this dangerous proposal which devalues human life in itself and puts our most vulnerable brothers and sisters under terrible pressure to take their lives prematurely. We advised you to encourage your MPs to champion the improvement of palliative care instead across Scotland.
Thankfully, many of you wrote to or met your MSPs to express your concerns and it has influenced a number of them to oppose the bill.
Now we are reaching another critical stage in the process where two bills, one before the Westminster parliament and the other before the Holyrood parliament, are coming up for their next voting stage in the coming weeks.
So, the Bishops of Scotland are calling the Catholic community to a Day of Prayer today, Sunday 4th May: to pray for our parliamentarians to cast their vote to care and not to kill; and to pray for Catholics across Scotland to reach out to their MSPs and MPs to urge them to work to improve palliative care and reject assisted suicide.
Assisted suicide, allows the state to provide the means of killing our brothers and sisters. Not only is this wrong in itself but it takes us down a dangerous spiral that inevitably harms the most vulnerable members of our society, by which we mean the elderly, the disabled and those who struggle with mental health; all those, in fact, who cannot stand up for themselves. One of the tests of good law is that it ensures our weakest citizens can feel safe. This law does the opposite and frightens the most vulnerable all around us.
When vulnerable people, including the elderly and disabled, express concerns about being a burden, the appropriate response is not to suggest that they have a duty to die. Rather, it is to commit ourselves to meeting their needs and providing the care and compassion they need to help them live.
Until now, we have trusted our doctors without question to be on the side of our life, health and wellbeing. It is wrong to think of them asking our loved ones if they would be better off dead. Introducing killing as medical treatment would, at a stroke it, end all confidence in our treasured doctor patient relationship.
At a time when suicide is on the rise in Scotland and we are doing our best to reduce it, what message are we sending when we say that suicide is the right choice provided it is overseen by a doctor? Laws like this normalise suicide and, with it, the false idea that some people’s lives are beyond hope
We all feel compassion for those who are terminally ill and dying and are perhaps in fear of a painful death. Our desire for better palliative care is about ensuring those at the final stages of life feel valued, treated with compassion, given the benefit of modern pain relief and helped feel some peace at the end. We owe a common responsibility to each other, especially to those who are weak, ill and dying. Legalising assisted suicide amounts to a rejection of this shared duty. Focussing the energies of both parliaments on improving palliative care, which is underfunded and inaccessible to many, is the right and the better way to go.
We invite you to join us in praying at today’s Masses and in your personal and family prayers for the defeat of assisted suicide, the safety of the vulnerable and the dignity of life.
Yours devotedly in Christ,
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+ John Keenan, President, Bishop of Paisley
+ Brian McGee, Vice-President, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles
+ Andrew McKenzie, Episcopal Secretary, Bishop of Dunkeld
+ Leo Cushley, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh
+ William Nolan, Archbishop of Glasgow
+ Joseph Toal, Bishop of Motherwell
+ Hugh Gilbert, Bishop of Aberdeen
+ Francis Dougan, Bishop of Galloway

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saints-philip-and-james/


Saints Philip and James share a feast day because their relics were brought to Rome together in early May. We know nothing more about either saint than what is found in the Scriptures. There we are told that they were apostles, and tradition has it that they were both martyred.

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-athanasius/


Saint Athanasius felt that spending his time and energy fighting for the truth of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity was worth it. He even endured five exiles to prove it. Through his writings and hard work, we today enjoy the truth of the Gospel in its fullness: Christ is both fully human and full...

The Office of Readings for St Joseph the Worker
From the Second Vatican Council's pastoral constitution "Gaudium et spes" on the Church in the modern world
The worldwide activity of man

By his labour and abilities man has always striven to improve the quality of his life. Today, particularly by means of science and technology, he has extended his mastery over almost the whole of nature, and still continues to extend it. Through the development of the many means of communication among nations, the human family is coming to see itself, and establish itself, as a single worldwide community. As a result, where formerly man looked especially to supernatural forces for blessings, he now secures many of these benefits for himself, thanks to his own efforts.
In the face of this vast enterprise now engaging the whole human race, men are asking themselves a series of questions. What is the meaning and value of all this activity? How should these benefits be used? Where are the efforts of individuals and communities finally leading us?
The Church is the guardian of the deposit of God’s word, from which are drawn the principles of the religious and moral order. Without always having a ready answer to every question, the Church desires to integrate the light of revelation with the skilled knowledge of mankind, so that it may shine on the path which humanity has lately entered.
Those who believe in God take it for granted that, taken by itself, man’s activity, both individual and collective – that great struggle in which men in the course of the ages have sought to improve the conditions of human living – is in keeping with God’s purpose.
Man, created in God’s image, has been commissioned to master the earth and all it contains, and so rule the world in justice and holiness. He is to acknowledge God as the creator of all, and to see himself and the whole universe in relation to God, in order that all things may be subject to man, and God’s name be an object of wonder and praise over all the earth.
This commission extends to even the most ordinary activities of everyday life. Where men and women, in the course of gaining a livelihood for themselves and their families, offer appropriate service to society, they can be confident that their personal efforts promote the work of the Creator, confer benefit on their fellow-men, and help to realise God’s plan in history.
So far from thinking that the achievements gained by man’s abilities and strength are in opposition to God’s power, or that man with his intelligence is in some sense a rival to his Creator, Christians are, on the contrary, convinced that the triumphs of the human race are a sign of God’s greatness and the effect of his wonderful providence.
The more the power of men increases, the wider is the scope of their responsibilities, as individuals and as communities.
It is clear, then, that the Christian message does not deflect men from the building up of the world, or encourage them to neglect the good of their fellow-men, but rather places on them a stricter obligation to work for these objectives.

Responsory