Ghoulish Christian compassion

A new California group called "Compassion and Choices" is practicing "ghoulish compassion," said Robert P. George, Princeton University professor and member of the President's Council on Bioethics. The group offers a toll-free number to help terminally ill people kill themselves and clergymen number among the volunteers.

The clergy say that they are merely practicing the Christian faith. The Sacramento Bee quotes John Brooke, a retired United Church of Christ minister, as saying the work is "consistent with my Christian faith and ministry, which ... is a God who has given people free will."

Tim Rosales, spokesperson for Californians Against Assisted Suicide, said, "This group is putting a clerical collar around Dr. Kevorkian." George compared the role of the clergy to the role of the medical profession: "It should be always to care, never to kill."

George said the hotline "is the very reverse of what clergy should be doing for their terminally ill people. They should be helping to prepare them for death --- give them spiritual comfort, help to strengthen them and unite them with their family, help them to repent of past sins."

The Sacramento Bee said Compassion and Choices drew inspiration from Howard Moody, a clergyman who helped women get abortions in the 1960s. Moody sees a parallel between abortion and suicide and has promised to help promote the group: "Why should they not have that right to determine, and ... plan their death in a way which is beneficial to their loved ones?"

George said the group's possibility for abuse is "unbelievably broad." He is afraid the group's victims will be the "poorest, most vulnerable members of society:" people whose relatives cannot afford to pay for medical care, "people who other people would like to get rid of, people under pressure to end their own lives."