That’s an indication of the kind of revolution that we are still living through, which began substantially about a hundred and fifty years ago. But there wasn’t just one explosion, one Big Bang then silence; the explosion set off a chain reaction which is still reverberating. And the explosions have not been clean; our imaginations as well as our ways of thinking have been irradiated by fallout. We are all infected or irradiated or contaminated, or whatever word you want to use, by the fallout of these explosions. Consider for a moment three representative names: Marx, Freud, Einstein. I don’t suppose many of us would care to sit an examination on the teaching of any one of them, yet the lives of every one of us have been profoundly affected by their thought. Marx - society; Freud - the individual soul; Einstein -mathematics: no such three figures and significantly pre-eminent in the same fields of study have been alive at the same time since the days of Confucius, Buddha and Pythagoras in the 6th century BC. It is arguable that the first three have affected the world in a far more revolutionary way than the second three. Or, again, consider Darwin, in relation to the animal world; Marx in relation to the social world; and Freud, in relation to the personal world. And this is to list what every schoolboy and schoolgirl knows.

 It is impossible for anyone in our society today, even only a little educated, to think as even his recent forefathers thought. Here is the response of one theologian, who was also a scientist, to his awareness of these great revolutions:

 The subject is voluntary euthanasia. Of course it’s not possible to narrow the subject down simply to voluntary euthanasia. There’s a constant spillage over into involuntary euthanasia, and we’ve just got to know a little of the sorts of debates that take place to realize that euthanasia is not confined to the end of life, but also occurs at the beginning: the controversy about euthanasia and the end of life is inseparable from the controversy about abortion. There’s a story of a worm that put its head through the soil and saw a centipede walking along and was filled with astonishment and said, ‘Gosh, that’s wonderful. How do you do that?' And the centipede said, ‘What do you mean? How do I do what?’ ‘How do you integrate all your legs?’ And the centipede said, ‘It’s quite easy, watch’ - and tripped! When anyone becomes self-conscious about something which he always has taken for granted, and has lived with hitherto unexamined but now challenged assumptions controlling his understanding and attitudes to life, he becomes insecure. Nowhere is this more true than the whole area of issues of life and death. 

 In Christian history the person who first clearly formulated what is regarded as the usual Orthodox attitude towards suicide is St Augustine. He set the pattern which continued for many centuries, continuing through the Reformation too. There were a few exceptions: Thomas More’s "Utopia" included Euthanasia; so did Bacon in "New Atlantis". John Donne, who was Dean of St Paul’s, London, in the 17th century, wrote a pamphlet called "Biathanatos", which he subtitled "Declaration of that paradox, or thesis, that self -homicide is not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise".

 Over the years since Augustine, there have been three basic attitudes towards suicide and Euthanasia. One, based on what is called ‘physicalism’, another based on ‘ecclesiastical positivism’, and a third based on ‘personalism’. The views based on physicalism were dominant until the reign of Pope Pius XII (1940—60): a limited ‘physical body’, physiological approach, combined with a static understanding of natural law ruled the day. But gradually, as new understandings forced the abandonment of the traditional understandings of physiology (e.g. on human generation) that ‘physical’ approach became less and less defensible and so there was a gradual movement away from that into what is called ‘ecclesiastical positivism’. Ecclesiastical positivism dealt much more directly with what was believed to be the revealed will of God expressed through an infallible magisterium, and even when the magisterium is not explicitly infallible, it is temerarious to question its judgements. Then the third one, ‘personalism’. After the Second Vatican Council came the tremendous wrestlings in the Catholic Church both on contraception and at that time on abortion, too. The Commission set up to advise the Pope was expected (by competent Roman Catholics theologians, as well as others) to say that, given the new situation, given the new understandings of human generation, given new contraceptive inventions like pills and so on, some kind of qualified approval of contraception, and some kind of qualified approval of abortion might be given. All such hopes were killed by "Humanae Vitae" and its absolute prohibitions. Roman Catholic theologians and moralists began then wrestling with the question "How do we deal with the consequences of this negative absolutism?", so ‘personalism’ became more and more the basis of ethical judgements in the Roman Catholic Church. The whole person, not only the physical, biological, but the whole person, embracing psychological, social and spiritual aspects. There is no doubt at all that today the official Roman Catholic view on issues of life and death is solid, authoritative and unhesitating.

But behind that absolutely rigid and clear cut forcefully expressed public condemnation there is profound disagreement and division. If you are an officially accredited teacher, and you question too explicitly or too publicly, then you will find that your teaching licence is withdrawn. But the contention is going on just the same, and there are several very interesting people whose names I could mention who have sometimes discreetly, sometimes openly, challenged the official Roman line on contraception, abortion and Euthanasia. Even in the official Roman teaching you can see how the official line, as it were, is getting frayed round the edges, because the realities of the human situation as they are encountered, even by the Roman Catholic doctors and nurses, have led to modifications and permissions: for example, distinguishing between ordinary and extraordinary means in ministering to people in need, or introducing the law of double effect; that you can administer a drug which you know will shorten or even terminate a patient’s life, as long as the effect you desire is not the termination of life but the alleviation of suffering. But you’ve just got to stop for a moment and look at these ‘qualifiers’ to realise how very slippery they are, how highly subjective they are. One doctor’s extraordinary means is another doctor’s ordinary means, and yet they are the people who are going to decide. Or the law of double effect: the intention within any individual’s heart and mind is extremely difficult to identify. You never know whether the primary purpose of the doctor administering the drug is to terminate life with the incidental alleviation of suffering, or his intention is to alleviate suffering with the incidental termination of life. So here we have a very, very strong official line with every appearance of authoritative, infallible moral certainty, but in fact it is fraying at the edges. One of the very serious consequences of the official Roman Catholic absolutism is that there is no vigorous public discussion, no developing Catholic casuistry on these subjects, to the impoverishment of other Churches too.

One of the first contemporary pieces of coherent work done on the questions we have been considering was a book called "Morals and Medicine" by Joseph Fletcher (1954). Since 1954 there has been an absolute explosion of writing, commissions and all kinds of programmes on both radio and television broadcast. The membership of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society may not be increasing by leaps and bounds, but education is taking place in our society about Euthanasia and the issues associated with it, and interest and concern have increased by leaps and bounds. Everywhere I go, I’ve found that I’ve never got to introduce the subject but people introduce it themselves. And then I’ve got to judge, "How far can I go in speaking to this person?", because there’s a tremendous taboo in Western Christianity about the taking of life. There’s very little taboo really about taking a life in war - the last three months of the Gulf Crisis have shown that - but there’s a tremendous taboo on the issues of life, death and Euthanasia. It takes a very long time for attitudes and understandings to change. Let me illustrate just how long it can take.

 The Anglican Church first debated contraception at the Lambeth Conference in 1908, and every ten years since then the Lambeth Conference discussed it, but it wasn’t until 1958, fifty years later, that the bishops at Lambeth said that in certain circumstances contraception was something which Christian couples could conscientiously practice. At the time, that was regarded by some Christians (certainly almost all Roman Catholics and some Anglicans), as an abdication of moral principle. Now look where the absolutism of "Humanae Vitae" has landed the Roman Catholic Church. As with contraception in the past, so with Euthanasia now; a slow but steady growth in interest, knowledge and acceptance is discernible. I understand from your own literature that 75% of British society are sympathetic to, if not actively supportive of Euthanasia. We have also got the example of what is happening in Holland, and in the United States, but you are all sufficiently familiar with this, so I don’t need to spell it out.

Traditional Orthodox opposition is based on two main foundations. One is the sovereignty of God and the other is the redemptive efficacy of suffering. Let’s look at these. First the sovereignty of God. 

 Another Roman Catholic theologian says Euthanasia is the destruction of " ‘the temple of God’ and a violation of the property rights of Jesus Christ."

 Here is how one Episcopalian responds:

This argument that we must not tamper with life also assumes that physiological life is sacrosanct. William Temple once pointed out "The notion that life is absolutely sacred is Hindu or Buddhist, not Christian". He said further that the argument that it cannot be right to kill a fellow human being will not stand up because -

Another writer makes the same point thus —

You must weigh these arguments and come to your own conclusions.

 So it can happen. But we mustn’t assume that it always happens. I would be very chary of accepting the judgement of somebody who was, in a pejorative sense, an ‘academic’ theologian, and whose theology was not worked out in the actual. anguish of sharing human suffering. here is Fletcher, the American Anglican:

The Church has a dreadful record in opposing things, a kind of spirit that always says ‘No’. The opposition of the Church by and large, not individual church people, but the official Church, to Euthanasia, is an expression of that spirit. Fletcher goes on -

 It is in relation to this, that I want to read to you a paragraph from one of the series of lectures we’ve been hearing in Edinburgh Diocese. This quotation is from a lecture by a woman theologian, a wife and mother:

Now I'd like to read from a book by a woman who is a professor of theology. She’s got a son called Arthur who is twenty-two, and for twenty-two years several times a day, Frances Young or her husband (who’s had to give up his job to look after Arthur) changes his nappies, feeds him, picks him up, puts him down. Arthur cannot stand, cannot speak, cannot feed himself; he is subject to convulsion fits and is incontinent. She’s talking about looking after Arthur:

She goes on:

Margaret Spufford is speaking about the beginning of life. What she says clearly applies equally to the end of life, and the prolonging of life modern medicine makes possible.

 "A Theological Perspective on Euthanasia". I have already gone on quite long enough, but also, perhaps, enough to indicate where the issues lie, and my own position regarding them. Perhaps the many aspects I have ignored can best be dealt with in your questions, which I hope will follow.