What is in Kelvin's Head?

Assisted Dying – Why I’ve changed my mind

15/03/2026

The time has come to admit it. I’ve changed my mind about assisted dying.

As a priest, the presumption is generally made that I’m against it for religious reasons. Recent aggressive campaigning by those in favour of allowing doctors to help people to end their lives has been relentlessly dismissive of religious reasons for being against it. As though religious people have no consciences worth respecting, no bodies of their own, no pain and no right to be heard.

The truth is, though I am very obviously religious, I do not have any religious reasons for objecting to the proposed law in principle but the longer that I’ve spent time with those who are actually dying the more I find myself unable to support a change in the law. My concerns are not religious but practical.

For a long time I was fairly uncommitted in this debate. My tendency would be to think that the alleviation of pain was the ultimate goal for anyone at the end of life and to take the view that preventing pain might well be a justification for allowing someone to end their life early.

More recently though experience has suggested to me that the question is a good deal more complicated than that. And so I find that I’ve changed my mind. From being moderately supportive of a change in the law, I now find myself fully opposed to the new legislation.

I remember the day when I changed my mind very well too. I had been called to the deathbed of someone whom I did not know. Before I could get into the room with the dying person, their family met me in the corridor. They asked me whether I could help them as things were very difficult.

“We were just wondering whether you could ask the doctors to speed things up a bit.”

I replied that I couldn’t as the law wouldn’t allow such a thing. And I asked why. What was it? Did they need me to help them to speak to the doctors about trying to get some better pain regulation?

“No” came the answer, “No – the thing is we’ve a skiing holiday booked and we leave on Monday – we just need this to be over so we can get away”.

That was the moment that I realised that not everyone dies with people close to them who have their best interests at heart.

Those who are dying are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. They are losing their power to make independent choices. They are vulnerable to the attitudes of everyone they encounter. And almost everyone whom they encounter may have a financial or other interest not only in their death but in its timing.

Spending time with the dying, I’ve also realised that those at the end of life are particularly vulnerable to societal assumptions about being a burden and causing a fuss.

Increasingly, funeral directors are making good money from ghoulishly promoting Direct Cremations – the disposing of bodies without ceremony or the presence of loved ones. To do so, they repeat again and again in their advertising, suggests that it is better to face death without causing a fuss.

Yet everyone who grieves knows that death in itself is disruptive. Death and grief change lives. They are not to be dismissed. No amount of trying not to cause a fuss changes that.

It has all made me realise that when I die, I want everyone to know that I want plenty of fuss. Fuss is how we show one another that we love them.

The desire to cause others no fuss at all though is one of the greatest pressures that the dying feel.

If it were the case that all people had access to the finest palliative care at the end of their lives and were all surrounded by those who had their best interests at heart in institutions where there is no financial pressure on managers and medics then I might be able to get to a position where I might support the assisted dying proposals.

However, we don’t live or die in that world. And until then, the best way to assist people to die is by investing in those studying pain management, better funding hospitals and hospices and by listening to the stories of those who sit alongside those who are dying.

I’ve sat in those rooms many times.

All of us should be in the presence of those who love and care for us when we die. Not all of us will be. The law, as it stands, is the best way to protect the interests of all of us when we die. For these reasons, I hope that our parliamentarians have the courage to vote no when the final vote is taken on this bill. It is legislation that would fundamentally change the relationship between the individual and the state.

The principle of alleviating pain is a godly one but the reality is that the devil is in all manner of practical detail.

Assisted dying, euthanasia, scottish parliament

27 responses to “St Eucalyptus and St Anaglypta revisited”

Kirstin Freeman

16/03/2017

I think in a church where you can believe that the bread and wine are either symbolic or actually Our Lord there will be differing answers depending on what an individual believes is or is not happening. Having said that I think it raises far more questions about the nature of Church than the nature of the Eucharist. If people on far flung islands can worship by extension then why can’t the person sitting in their flat across the road from the Cathedral? I can understand the desire for this but I do not think this is the answer. I remain convinced that a mid week Eucharist is the way forward in such a situation and I have not been convinced otherwise, yet.

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1. Kelvin
  
  16/03/2017
  
  This reminds me of the idea of omnidistant learning that we were trying to develop from Scottish Churches Open College a number of years ago – the idea that the learning experience of someone in Lewis should be the same as the learning experience of someone living in Edinburgh.
  
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Kate

19/03/2017

Long answer short.

The celebrant [together with the Congregation] invokes the presence through the Eucharistic prayer. We all accept that prayer is limited in neither time nor space. There is therefore no requirement for the celebrant and congregation to all be co-located in time or space. Indeed, is that not the true mystery? We share in the fellowship and sacrament of the Last Supper though separated from First Century Jerusalem by thousands of years and by thousands of miles? What, against that, are the few miles between the two islands, or a few days for that matter? We partake of one bread irrespective of time and space, a bread blessed once and for all by Jesus Himself and to partake we merely do as He instructed – we remember Him. In sharing one bread, we are one body.

In concentrating on form we risk not seeing the wood for the trees, we risk diminishing our appreciation of the great mystery of the Eucharist across time and space. One of the advantages of receiving communion in a consecrated church is that it is easier to experience fellowship across time with fellow Christians if we are not also separated geographically from them.

The very pithy version. In terms of the primary function of the Eucharist, separation in neither time nor space can prevent the essential validity of communion. Secondary aspects and benefits such as personal revelation, improved fellowship etc might, however, be made more effective / powerful by co-location in time and/or space of the participants. Digital links and recordings in this regard can also help diminish the sense of separation (thereby improving secondary effectiveness of communion) and are beneficial if physical co-location is impractical.

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Fr. John-Julian, OJN

19/03/2017

If, as you suggest, Kate, the Eucharist is merely the “fellowship and sacrament of the Last Supper” then it is foolish to spend the money and time on organizing a Church, constructing church buildings, training and ordaining priests, consecrating bishops, or calling an assembly. All that is needed is a bit of New Age advice on how to mentally channel the Upper Room so we can “remember” hard enough. Why bother with anything else? Jesus did it at the Last Supper and so in devout and pious re-membrance we can eat out bread and drink our wine at our own dining room tables and that’s that.

If, on the other hand, the Eucharist is NOT merely a memorial of the Last Supper—if it is, in fact, a sacramental and mystical participation in the life and death of the Lord, with Christ’s own sacrificial presence confected by an Assembly of his mystical Body and its priestly epiclesis, then for it to have any spiritual integrity, it DOES depend on touch and on word and on the Church’s priesthood. It DOES require words heard by physical ears and actions done by physical hands and seen by physical eyes—we are not fleshless angels drifting about in some numinous haze. If the Eucharist is to be “sacramental” in any true sense of the word, it absolutely requires “outward and visible signs” in order to ac-cess an ”inward and spiritual grace”—or it is not a sacrament at all.

[By the way, in passing, we American Episcopalians owe immeasurable gratitude to the Episcopal Church of Scotland for their bishops’ insistence to Bishop Seabury that we include an epiclesis (“Invocation” was our word for it) in our Eucharistic prayer. You saved us from just such “memorialism.”]

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1. Kate
  
  20/03/2017
  
  I wasn’t saying we memorialise the Last Supper. I am saying we participate in the Last Supper itself. Very different.
  
  But let’s park that because the point of agency can be explained very simply. Christ is our living High Priest. I think that is something almost all Christians accept because the Bible is pretty clear. As High Priest, Christ is present at the Eucharist so naturally He is the agent ahead of any bishop or presbyter or deacon or lay person. The hierarchy beneath the High Priest is irrelevant for this question: it is sufficient to recognise that the High Priest is present and is the agent. Clearly then simplistic touch cannot be important.
  
  As I say, the minister might well have a role, even an important one, in helping the congregation to understand the sacrament, in making the experience as effective as possible but the presence of a minister is strictly unnecessary, although a church is entitled, I think, to insist that a minister leads the Eucharist to ensure good order and a proper reverence. Kelvin posed his questions, I think, in terms of agency and no minister is needed because the High Priest presides, but if he poses the same questions in terms of proper reverence then he might get quite different answers as to the appropriateness of digital links – but the answers are then subjective rather than objective as they are for the question of agency.
  
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  1. Fr. John-Julian, OJN
    
    20/03/2017
    
    Kate, I’m afraid that there is not space here for a fulsome exposition of the metaphysics and theology of the Holy Eucharist. Let me say only that the Last Supper is NOT the core of the Holy Eucharist—the Eucharist is NOT a re-enacting of (or participation in) the Last Supper. It is the mystical union with the Person of the risen Jesus through the activity of the Holy Spirit who confects the Sacrament.
    
    Jesus is “The Great High Priest” (as in Hebrews 4:14-16) only because of the sacrifice of himself upon the cross—i.e., he was both sacrificing priest and sacrificial victim (see Aquinas, Summa Q. 22). That sacrificial crucifixion had not happened yet, so he was NOT a priest at the Last Supper—when he said, “This is my body” and “This is my blood”, NOTHING HAPPENED TO THE BREAD AND WINE AT THE LAST SUPPER. It is metaphysically impossible to say that Jesus was both sitting (or lying) at table and also present in the bread and wine that sat there in front of him on the same table. Bilocation was not one of Jesus’s miracles!
    
    The ACTOR in the Holy Eucharist is the Holy Spirit who effects the consecration in Eucharist. In our American modern language we address the Father: “Recalling [Jesus’s] death, resurrection, and ascension, we offer you these gifts [of bread and wine]. Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son.” And for 2000 years the Church founded by that same Holy Spirit has declared that the proper (and necessary) agents of that consecration are (a) an assembly of Christians, and (b) a bishop or priest truly ordered by that same Church.
    
    So the Eucharist is NOT a mystical participation in the earthly Last Supper. It is a mystical communion with the risen (post-Resurrection) sacramental body of Christ.
    
    Kelvin: this is getting to be a bit too much—just cut out this reply, if you wish, and let it die here. JJ+
    
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Robin

07/04/2017

I am frankly shocked by parts of this discussion. The Eucharist is offered as a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and it is offered on behalf of the Whole People of God by the priest who stands in place of Christ. Christ is both the Victim and the Priest in the Eucharistic offering and, as stated above, we participate most personally in His risen body together with the whole church. Part of that celebration may be the reception of His Body and Blood, but holy communion is not the focus of the Eucharistic offering– it is a blessing from having the Body and a Blood of Christ with us now. Under traditional sacramental theology, other than the priest, the laity need not even receive communion to complete the sacrificial act. No one suggests that we return to the past and have non-communicating masses, but the very idea of some kind of holy communion across the water on the internet simply negates our most intimate and personal participation in the Sacrifice of the Altar and would make us, like the Church of Scotland, mere recipients of a Happy Meal. Heaven help us, but even 1662 gets this right with the rubrics that instruct the priest to lay his hand on all the Eucharistic elements during consecration. Across the internet??

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1. Kelvin
  
  07/04/2017
  
  If you read back through previous posts about this, Robin, you’ll see that it began when I was asked to help at a service in an English Cathedral when the bread and wine were held up by those assisting but never touched the altar and were never touched by the celebrant.
  
  Personally I’ve got more trouble with the situation (known to exist in Scotland) where a visiting cleric is asked to consecrate “enough bread and wine for the next six weeks as there won’t be a priest here until then” than I do with a live weekly consecration mediated by the internet.
  
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Robin

08/04/2017

Thank you for your reply.
I have read further back in the blog and am even further gob-smacked.
Father, I do not want to cause any offence, but I think that there are two very different things here–communion and celebration–and they are not the same and should not be confused.
It is truly unfortunate, but there are many congregation in the wider Latin church who are not fortunate enough to participate in a regular (even frequent) Eucharistic celebration. For them, communion from the reserved sacrament is the only alternative. But it is a truly efficacious alternative–it is the channel of grace itself, the very Body and Blood of Christ as was offered at the Eucharist. It has no “shelf life”; it is exactly what it is on the day of consecration, whenever that may have been, unchanged and undiminished–six months is nothing. Certainly this is not the best of congregational (=get together) arrangements since a local Eucharistic celebration including communion would be preferred, but nevertheless it is entirely Corpus Christi–not less and not more than had the recipients had been present at mass of consecration itself and at one with the whole church. (And not being able to be present for the Eucharistal sacrifice, has nothing whatsoever to do with the efficacy their communion.)
My apologies, but I find your “preference” for remote mediation as an alternative (even the six-month alternative) to this as quite amazing if it involves any use or communion from such mediated elements. Remote participation in the Eucharist of the day (internet, radio, etc.), followed by communion from the locally reserved sacrament would surely be acceptable, but anything else–unless you physically celebrate at the location where the elements will be offered, consumed/reserved–tales us right back to Happy Meal. Such is the absolute need for the priest’s physical presence at mass.
In apology I should say that I haven’t been at St Mary’s since the days of the late Frs Moncrief, McIntosh and Ingham (I don’t even know if Fr Ingham is still alive) in the ’60s, but I have followed from a distance. These priests taught a solid catholic understanding of the Eucharist mystery that I have treasured for years, and that sadly the SEC now seems to be losing.

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1. Kelvin
  
  08/04/2017
  
  I’m bewildered as to how taking the same bread and wine out of the tabernacle from week to week falls into the category of a solid catholic understanding of the Eucharistic mystery.
  
  Not now, and not never has this been OK in the Scottish Episcopal Church.
  
  My strong hunch is that Frs Moncrief, McIntosh and Ingham knew little of the internet but taught the faith in their day with as much devotion as we must in ours.
  
  Sadly I knew none of them though I had the joy of Fr McIntosh’s sister in my previous congregation.
  
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Helen

14/04/2017

I think it’s an interesting question about what makes people be ‘together’. Obviously in an actual service some people may only be watching and not fully participating, but if people are watching on television they can only be watching and though they may follow along they can’t be participating in the service. On certain forms of internet conferencing they can be participating and contributing. I can imagine a Skype-style where both of your churches have screens that show the other congregation and at certain points ‘now over to St A’s where Joan is going to read the Epistle’. I had a thought that one answer to the question of whether people are really ‘two or three gathered together’ even though separated in space is, ‘could they all somehow disrupt the proceedings?’ If not (they are only watching a screen) then that is a different experience to if so.
In the Episcopal church I think it might be hard to get a consensus about administering communion in the absence of a priest – there are clearly some people who believe very strongly that only a priest can, whereas there are others of us who have equally strong problems with the reserved sacrament. Perhaps in the SEC this kind of experiment doesn’t have one right or wrong answer to the question of whether the bread and wine should be reserved or not but this has to be worked out with individual congregations.
It is a really interesting question and one which I think we should be trying to answer: can the internet help us actually be together in a different way to the experience of watching Songs of Praise? It would be good to have the opinions of people who use online apps to communicate regularly with the people they love who are at a distance as a starting point I think.

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