Discussing euthanasia with Monica Doumit.
Cy Kellett:
Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, and we’ll talk a bit about euthanasia today we’re around the world we’re having to defend what used to be a pretty straightforward idea, which is that you should not take the lives of innocent people and that we should do all we can to care for those who are in distress rather than dispose of those who are in distress. No longer, maybe a majority idea in large parts of the world. And where it is a majority idea still today, it needs shoring up because it’s very easy for people to maybe become lazy on this point or to become convinced that, “Oh, well, there’s no real moral import. Let people do what they want to do at the end of their lives.”
Australia is among the places where this whole conversation, this whole battle really is taking place. And so, we welcome a wonderful guest. I have to say one of our favorite people here at Catholic Answers. I remember years ago when we went to Australia hearing people say, “You got to meet Monica Doumit.” And she was presented to us as you. You’re going to meet this wonderful pro-life speaker and activist, and she is every bit that, but also a full, well-rounded, very extremely capable defender of the Catholic faith and of morality in general. Monica Doumit from the Archdiocese of Sydney, Australia. Thanks for being here.
Monica Doumit:
Thank you so much for having me. What an extraordinary intro.
Cy Kellett:
Was it good enough? I don’t know. You flew all the way from Australia. I feel like I better do something good.
Monica Doumit:
I’m so excited to be here in person, finally. I think this has been years coming.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. We are delighted that you got here and you’ve been around the US this time that you’ve been here. And are we any different as you come back? How often do you get here? Every what, five, 10 years or something?
Monica Doumit:
So this is only my third time in the States and my first time on the East Coast.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, the first time you got to visit the East Coast?
Monica Doumit:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
It’s awful, isn’t it? It’s horrible. Oh, I’m just kidding. Sorry about that. Oh, that’s great. Well, before we start, are there any impressions you want to share of what you have encountered here in the US this time?
Monica Doumit:
What I love is that every city that I’ve visited is almost a different place.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, that’s fair. Right.
Monica Doumit:
But I have to say San Diego feels more like Sydney than anywhere else.
Cy Kellett:
That’s so funny because when we were in Sydney visiting you, I couldn’t get over how similar these two cities are. And I think it’s because in large part, there’s the ocean, there’s the nice breeze off the ocean, all that, but we imported in the late 19th century eucalyptus trees here, so we got eucalyptus trees everywhere. And that’s what you have in Sydney.
Monica Doumit:
Yeah, absolutely.
Cy Kellett:
So you feel right at home.
Monica Doumit:
I feel right at home.
Cy Kellett:
Here on the eucalyptus of Southern California. Well, maybe give us an idea. In Australia, I think the phrase is VAD assisted death. Is that-
Monica Doumit:
Voluntary assisted dying.
Cy Kellett:
Voluntary assisted dying. Well, that’s a very nice term. That doesn’t sound like that’s bad at all. Voluntary assisted dying.
Monica Doumit:
No, that’s right. When you start calling it euthanasia or assisted suicide, people get a little bit upset. So we use nice euphemisms to actually hide what’s going on. And VAD is Australia’s chosen euphemism.
Cy Kellett:
And is this what we see in the United States? I do think because we’re a neighbor to Canada. Canada is ahead of us on the downward curve, it would seem. Canada’s quite strenuous in its efforts towards killing. I don’t know how else to put it. Where would you say Australia is?
Monica Doumit:
Well, we’re not as bad as Canada. Thanks be to God. But we are getting a lot closer to them than we are to some of the US states. So Oregon in the US is always quoted by Australians as, “That’s the model that we want.”
Cy Kellett:
Really?
Monica Doumit:
In Oregon they say shows that an assisted suicide regime can work. So Australians who are advocating for euthanasia will always point to Oregon as a model. But Victoria was the first state in Australia to legalize euthanasia. And in its first year of operation, Victoria had as many euthanasia deaths as Oregon had in its 18th year.
Cy Kellett:
Wow. Now, Victoria is a very liberal, very secular state-
Monica Doumit:
Absolutely.
Cy Kellett:
… in Australia. I suppose you could go to a place like Tasmania, it might be more secular. I don’t know. Isn’t that the most secular part?
Monica Doumit:
Oh, look, Victoria, I would say is probably-
Cy Kellett:
The winner?
Monica Doumit:
… the winner. But you’ve got Tasmania and you’ve got the Australian Capital Territory coming in close second and third.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Okay. So there is something about secularizing, which has happened. It’s been notable in the last 60, 70 years in Canada, the secularizing of Canada. So there’s something about being the loss of religious faith, the loss of the Christian faith that then leads to these moral innovations, I suppose, like an embrace of euthanasia.
Monica Doumit:
I would agree. And I think that it has something to do with control. I think part of the giving up a religion is about wanting control over your own life. And I think euthanasia and assisted suicide is almost one of the ultimate or definitely the final expression of that. We try to control everything that happens in our life. And then, there’s the idea that, “Well, death comes for everyone.” And so, the only way that you can control your death then is to control the timing and the manner of it. So I think that the rejection of religion gives you this idea that, “No, I can control every aspect of my life. There is no greater authority in my life than myself.”
Cy Kellett:
Right. Yeah. There’s no one else to surrender to. And certainly, suffering takes on a completely different meaning. It’s really suffering, it can’t be in to the secular way of thinking, can’t be anything but a subtraction from the ideal of life. Whereas for the Christian, suffering is not to be a permanent part of life, but it’s part of the pilgrimage back home to the house of the Father. So it has value.
Monica Doumit:
Absolutely. And even suffering, not even at the end of life, but all throughout life has value when we grow, often mainly through our sufferings. If you don’t have an eternal viewpoint, then why would you enjoy suffering of any time?
Cy Kellett:
So how much do you feel like in Australia you need to convince Catholics of this as opposed to just, “Well, it’s the Catholic Church trying to stand up against secularity.” Do you see what I’m saying? Did that make sense? That question make sense? There might be two constituencies, the believing Catholic, who also thinks, “I’m perfectly fine with euthanasia.” And then the other constituency, which is, “I don’t believe in. You got nothing to say to me about this anyway.”
Monica Doumit:
Well, we find that we don’t have most of the people in our pews-
Cy Kellett:
They don’t agree.
Monica Doumit:
… on this issue. They don’t agree. Many of them either want this option for themselves or can’t see a problem with other people choosing it. So any of the polls that are done at a national level shows Catholics certainly in line with the rest of the population and probably more pro-euthanasia than some of our Protestant brothers and sisters.
Cy Kellett:
Really?
Monica Doumit:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Monica Doumit:
Which is really disappointing. And look, I think it comes from a misunderstanding. We can get Catholics on abortion and I think they understand that as a life issue. But this one, I don’t think they get it. It’s a lot harder to argue than abortion. But I think the arguments against euthanasia are so easy. I think they’re so much easier than even the arguments against abortion.
Cy Kellett:
Do you really?
Monica Doumit:
I absolutely do.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, then help me with that, because that’s what I wanted to get to because I think it’s hard to make these arguments. So why is it easy for you to give us those easy arguments? In other words, give me those so I can share them with my kids and my kids’ friends, and my family.
Monica Doumit:
And I think that while death is in intensely personal, it’s not private, a person’s death has an effect on the entire community and those around them. And if we were to start simply just killing off people who are vulnerable at the end of life, so many things change. I don’t don’t know what it’s like here in the States, but the quality of our aged care systems are already under immense stress-
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Right. That’s the same here.
Monica Doumit:
… in Victoria, which was the first state to legalize euthanasia. They had the fewest number of palliative care physicians per capita in the country, the lowest number of palliative care beds per capita in the country. What encourages the state to invest in end of life care if euthanasia is presented as an option? I think it’s something like almost half of the healthcare budget is taken up by people in their final year of life. If we could shorten that, if we could eliminate that final year of life, it takes the responsibility from the state when it comes to healthcare and end of life care. It takes completely off the table. And it also takes the responsibility of us to care for our loved ones at the end of life. It makes a society in incredibly cold. And you see this in places where euthanasia and assisted suicide have been legal.
Now for a generation or more, there’s almost this expectation that people will end their lives and not be a burden on others or on the community. One of the things I always say when I’m speaking usually to high schoolers or something like that, I’ll say, “When anyone’s telling you that this is about choice, I think about who makes money off the choice that they’re offering.” And in any pro-life issue, whether it’s abortion, whether it’s assisted reproduction, whether it’s euthanasia, the ones making money or saving money, aren’t the people who are supposedly being offered the choice.
Cy Kellett:
Right. It’s not the child in the abortion.
Monica Doumit:
No.
Cy Kellett:
It’s not the elderly person who’s being encouraged, “Hey, you could really save the state, your family, everybody, a lot of trouble if you just go.” Yeah.
Monica Doumit:
Someone’s making money off the so-called choice that they’re presenting. And Canada, they’re so blatant about it. They had the parliamentary budget office put together a paper of how much money they would save annually if they call it made over their medical assistance in dying, if that was legal and how much they would save if it got expanded to people with disability and chronic illness, and how much they would save if it got expanded to people with mental illness. And you’re finding in Canada now, you’ve got people… They had that survey the other day where a significant proportion of the country said that homelessness should be the proper reason or should be a reason that someone is eligible for euthanasia.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. So it just seems that once you accept this as a cure, you can cure a lot of things by just killing people. You can cure a lot.
Monica Doumit:
Exactly. Right. And you alleviate the community and the state of the responsibility to care for people. But do we want to live in a society where the idea is if I don’t have the money or I don’t have the energy or the desire to care for you, then you can just go? And are any of us safe in those circumstances? None of us are safe.
Cy Kellett:
Well, I feel very much for the parent in Canada who has a severely depressed adult child. Because when you have that in a family or maybe a psychotic adult child, it’s a battle month after month, day after day, year after year to keep bringing that person back to knowing that they’re valued, knowing that they’re loved, knowing that the resources that are used on them are worth it. But as a parent of an adult child with serious mental illness, I can’t care for that child. I need a hospital. I need hospitals, nurses, doctors, and any one of them in Canada could be the person who ends my child’s life. And so, the very services that I need to access as the parent of that child, I’m terrified of them now. And I can’t get my child the care I want.
Monica Doumit:
100%. In Australia, over the last few years, we had a disability royal commission, so a big public inquiry into disability care. And you had parent after parent of children born with disabilities or caring for children with long-term disabilities come and say that the coldness with which they were received every time they shut up at a hospital or something like that. Because the idea of, I remember one mother saying, she just got asked, how much longer are you going to let keep doing this? You don’t have to keep bringing him back to the hospital. I have a friend who-
Cy Kellett:
I’m sorry Monica, but that is horrific. This is the medical care system. This is the parent that didn’t ask for this. The child didn’t ask for this. All they need is care. And what they are is a burden to the medical professionals.
Monica Doumit:
Absolutely. I have a dear friend of mine who took a few years out of work to care for her ailing grandmother. They were very, very close. And she said that she remember taking her grandmother into the hospital, this one home because her blood pressure had dropped. And the nurse just said to her, “You know what lovey, if you don’t want to just tuck her off in bed next time, you don’t necessarily just have to bring her back and she’ll go.”
Just this idea of when you have the medical profession looking at the person for whom you are caring as a burden and making you feel that way. That’s an extraordinary shift. And that’s in a country where euthanasia is only just beginning. Laws are educative, they’re formative, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Monica Doumit:
And so, what happens in 10, 15, 20 years time when this starts to become normal in a generation or two, the idea that you would care for somebody at the end of their life would just seem to be quite bizarre. It’s not so much I think a post-Christian idea, but a pre-Christian idea. Because this is where Christianity came in. People would leave-
Cy Kellett:
Children or the elderly. Right.
Monica Doumit:
… their children and the elderly just to die of exposure, whatever it was in the Christians who came in and said, “No, you can’t do that and you’re supposed to care for them. And we’re going back there.”
Cy Kellett:
Right. Yeah. Going back there with all new equipment to get the job done more efficiently. It’s completely a mechanized thing really.
Monica Doumit:
And by getting doctors involved, you’re giving it some type of authority, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Monica Doumit:
You’re giving it some respectability. Doctors don’t need to be involved in this. I remember one doctor saying to me that you’d be better get vets to do it because they’re much more used to giving lethal injections than doctors are. But the idea that you put it in the hands of the medical profession tries to give you some respectability to it when there is nothing respectable about this, there’s nothing.
Cy Kellett:
Well, do you have Catholic hospitals in Australia?
Monica Doumit:
We do have Catholic hospitals in Australia.
Cy Kellett:
Can we stand up against this or no?
Monica Doumit:
Well, at the moment, all of the legislation that has passed allows Catholic hospitals to conscientiously object as an institution to euthanasia, but not so much our aged care facilities.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, really?
Monica Doumit:
Where I live in New South Wales, the laws have passed and they come into effect in November of this year. And Catholic aged care facilities, even if the staff themselves won’t participate, they’re required to allow others to come on site and engage in every part of the euthanasia process from initial assessment to the administration of lethal drugs.
Cy Kellett:
But these are people who, out of their religious conviction, want to care for the elderly. Maybe religious women and men, maybe lay people, they can’t. They just can’t do that. The state has no idea what it’s asking of these people or it doesn’t care. It just doesn’t care what they’re-
Monica Doumit:
It’s funny, a little bit of both. So when I was talking to some of the politicians about it, they were adamant that no, they had given the right of conscientious objection to Catholic facilities. And I was saying, “No, you didn’t.” And we lobbied, and we lobbied. And so it’s either a reckless, almost criminal ignorance on their part or just apathy. But you asked about hospitals and while technically by law they’re preserved, governments who want to get around the ability for Catholic hospitals to object have found other means.
So in the last few weeks in Canberra, which is our national capital, the equivalent of your Washington DC, we’ve had just the most extraordinary thing happen. And Canberra’s quite a small city, there are only two large public hospitals. One’s run under the public system and the other’s run by Calvary Healthcare, which is the little company of Mary. And so, while it’s a public hospital, it’s operated by Catholics. And there was a parliamentary report that was released earlier in the year on the availability of abortion. And it criticized this hospital’s overriding religious ethos. And then the government announced on the 10th of May of this year that it would forcibly acquire the hospital.
Cy Kellett:
What does that mean forcibly acquire? They just seizing the hospital.
Monica Doumit:
They will seize the hospital, the land, the buildings, all of the equipment. They will take over the operation and they will just transfer the staff from contracts with Calvary to contracts with Canberra Health Services. So they announced it on the 10th of May. They put the bill into Parliament on the 11th of May, and then it was passed on the 31st. The Calvary Hospital put up a fight, they went to court. But while since I’ve been here in the States-
Cy Kellett:
They lost their appeal.
Monica Doumit:
… they lost their appeal. And so, July 3rd, the government moves in and takes over.
Cy Kellett:
I have to say, Monica, this whole discussion of seizing a hospital is… I actually think that’s what a lot of really, when you get really paranoid in the United States, you think, “That’s what they’re going to do. They’re going to end up seizing all the Catholic.” But nobody thinks it’s going to happen next week or something. And you’re having it happen in Australia, just out-and-out taking a Catholic hospital because it’s too pro-life.
Monica Doumit:
Yeah. Well, the government will say, “No, it has nothing to do with religious grounds, not ideological at all.” There are administrative or financial reasons, but that’s very, very hard to believe. And also, it’s given a lot of us support of what’s next. Okay, so hospital today, what about the Catholic schools? We don’t like what you’re teaching. Okay, sure, we can try through the laws to force you to teach a certain way or we can just take the school. I don’t know. I feel like often when we speak, I’m saying I feel like we’re crossing another line.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. But that is what’s happening. All around the world, you get that sense of, “Oh, somebody’s crossing another line.” And another thing that was unthinkable just happened and nobody noticed it and it just keeps going.
Monica Doumit:
Yeah, absolutely. And I don’t think that the solution, at least in the short term, is going to be political because I don’t think any political party is really better than another on some of this stuff. And so, we have to figure out how to fight in a way that the idea that, “Okay, if you elect this political party over that political party, it’s not going to make much of a difference.”
Cy Kellett:
Do you think that there’s a crucible in this sense too, that within the church, because it does feel this way in the United States, I don’t know if this is how it is in the United States, but it feels this way in the United States. I wonder if it feels this way in Australia that there are a certain number of Catholics who will say, “Well, let’s just go along with all this stuff and what’s the big deal?” And then, there’s another fighting side of the church. And so, this social pressure actually tends towards division in the church as well, within the church itself.
Monica Doumit:
Yes, certainly. Look, I think the seizure of a hospital by the government.
Cy Kellett:
It’s a little bit unifying.
Monica Doumit:
It’s probably unifying. There aren’t that many who take different sides, but certainly division in the church on some of these social issues can be really difficult, and politicians play on that, right? They know if they’re speaking to a bishop that he can say one thing, but they also know that a number of his congregation aren’t going to side with him anyway. And so, it’s divisive and it’s certainly counterproductive.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. So do you think that as assisted dying becomes more accepted and more seen as the medical standard in Australia, that Catholics will have to get out of the medical business?
Monica Doumit:
I think that that’s coming.
Cy Kellett:
That’s what’s happening?
Monica Doumit:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I remember in Canada there was a case where I think one of the judges said, “Well, look, if you don’t want to participate in this, then you should do a form of medicine that’s not going to require dermatology or podiatry, or something like that.” But I don’t know what that’s like to you.
Cy Kellett:
Armies of Catholic podiatrists just because they can’t do any other kind of medicine.
Monica Doumit:
Yeah. And I don’t know what it’s like here, but the last thing we need happening is stripping talented people from healthcare on the basis that they won’t kill their patients. I think quite seriously. I was saying before about our nursing homes soon to be forced to allow euthanasia on site, and there’s a real argument to just civil disobedience. I’m happy to have that argument. I’m happy to have the public fight that says, “You really want to close us because we refuse to kill our residents? It’s fine. Let’s have that fight publicly and see where you end up.” I don’t think you want to be the government that does that.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. I do feel like there’s the problem of, in the United States and the argument on abortion where they go, “Well, the Catholics have abortions at the same rates as everyone else.” Well, they’re not wrong about that, and on a certain level. So say there’s one bold operator of a place to care for the elderly who says, they’ll go, “You know what? There’s 20 more just like you. They’re just as Catholic as you are and they’re not giving us any trouble. So fine.” You wonder how effective the witness can be when Catholicism itself is practiced so lukewarmly.
Monica Doumit:
Yeah, look, 100%. I think that we are reaping the benefits or whatever the opposite of benefits are of not only bad formation, but bad hiring practices and all of those types of things. So now, some of the Catholics who staff our institutions are not distinguishable from those who would be in public institutions. And that’s no one’s fault, but ours. No one forced us to do that. We had all of the religious liberty in the world years ago and didn’t exercise it.
Cy Kellett:
Yes, I see what you’re saying. When we were respected and in an important part of the community, we taught and we inculcated weak sauce. And now, we got to live with it because, okay, so now we’re not a respected and esteemed part of the community, and we don’t have a community to stand up and say anything about it.
Monica Doumit:
Exactly right.
Cy Kellett:
We killed the community that could have done it.
Monica Doumit:
That could have fought back. And look, I do think that’s a temporary thing. I see great signs of hope. And because those who are entering not only these professions, but are taking their faith seriously. Now, have to do it against the culture that’s incredibly hostile. And so, it’s a choice that they have to make. And I think we’ve got a generation of fighters coming, but…
Cy Kellett:
One thing we have not been good at as a church is letting institutions go. There’s many bishops in the United States, for example, who know that the local Catholic university is not Catholic, but they won’t let it go. They won’t just admit to themselves, “This is not a Catholic university. I can’t recognize it anyway, let it go. Let a secular university. Move on, get over it.” But we don’t do that. We are hogs of our institutions. We won’t get smaller in order to be more effective. We refuse.
Monica Doumit:
Absolutely. And look, I’ve always been on the close the schools camp, but then it’s funny, this seizure of Calvary Hospital in Australia has made me rethink that a little bit because it’s like, “Well, that’s what they want. They want us to give up the institutions.”
Cy Kellett:
That’s a good point.
Monica Doumit:
And so, if I’m doing something that the progressives desire, then I’m going to have to think that through a little bit more because it’s not necessarily a show of defiance. So yeah, it’s a difficult one. I don’t know what comes.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, because they’re perfectly happy to seize all the schools and hospitals you don’t want, all the elderly care facilities, everything you don’t want, they’ll take them.
Monica Doumit:
Particularly when such a high proportion of their funding comes from the government anyway. It’s not like it’s going to be an increased cost or much of an increased cost. So I don’t know what the solution is, but I-
Cy Kellett:
Well, let me ask, have you ever thought about the parish as a solution in that? Parishes could offer healthcare. In the United States, I think one of the models of this might be the Catholic homeschooling movement. They just left the whole economy of the whole system. I don’t want a private school. I don’t want a public school. I’m out of the whole economy of that. Well, parishes could do that. They could directly take care of the elderly. Any thought about that or?
Monica Doumit:
It’s funny. I hadn’t thought about it in the context of healthcare, but certainly within education. I think parishes can be really creative about what they do. I always say in terms of education, I think, why aren’t we running summer camps for kids and things like that and school holiday programs where parents desperately need something to do with their kids during the school holidays. And so if we are worried about the type of formation that kids are getting in school, then we should be running that in our parishes during school holidays. We provide a solution to parents. And also, we provide a place where we know that kids are going to be formed and we give them a community of other kids who are being taught in the same way, where they’re not necessarily going to get that at their school.
So I certainly can see how that can work in an education setting and in an aged care and end of life setting. So many more people now are staying in their homes for as long as they possibly can and there’s no reason why the parish can’t be a really good network of care for those people who want to stay in their homes and who for the most part can stay in their homes, but might need a little bit of extra care, maybe a bit of cleaning, maybe a bit of meal preparation, showering, things like that. Certainly, this scope for us to be doing that. And really, that’s what the early church did, right?
Cy Kellett:
The thing is around the local community, I don’t know if they hired doctors and nurses, but we could hire doctors and nurses. We could organize volunteers to be the support for that. It just doesn’t fit the model we’ve got now. But the model we’ve got now in Australia, they’re taking it away from you and they will eventually hear. In California, the strategy is just to bankrupt the dioceses every few years. Just if you just keep bankrupting them enough times effectively, you’ve taken everything away from them.
Monica Doumit:
Yeah. Looking in a temporal sense, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Well, that’s right. That’s right. Yeah.
Monica Doumit:
But that’s the other thing. All of these attempts to, “Okay, if we just take this away from the church, if we just restricted in that, then it will die.”
Cy Kellett:
That’s the opposite of what will happen.
Monica Doumit:
That’s not what happens. That’s not how it works. Read the end of the story, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Monica Doumit:
That’s not what happens. How we go about it. I don’t know, but I know for certain that it’s an exciting time. There’s going to be some years where we’re going to have to get really creative and work with people who maybe we haven’t worked with before, and maybe stop fighting some of the smaller internal battles that that’ll matter less and less.
Cy Kellett:
How dare you say that? Catholics must fight constantly over the smallest things.
Monica Doumit:
Can I be controversial and say, maybe we should stop fighting the liturgy wars for a little while and…
Cy Kellett:
Don’t say it, Monica. What will be the meaning of our lives if we do that? At lunch, we were talking, and it did occur to me that, I don’t know why, just we were talking about the battles over marriage 20 years ago, and everywhere in the world that we fought, except with some few exceptions, the marriage battle, we lost it and we lost it. So convincingly that I don’t think anyone has any serious plans to ever reverse it. It feels like an irreversible loss. “Okay. So be it.” Do you think that that’s what’s going to happen with euthanasia? Do you think we’re going to lose everywhere and just stay on, and be on the outside as a prophetic voice going, “Nope, that’s not what you think it is. That’s not going to give you what you think it’s going to give you?”
Monica Doumit:
Look, it’s hard to say, but an interesting thing is happening in some of the Catholic aged care facilities back home, and even in jurisdictions where this law is on the books and even where it’s required in aged care facilities, what they’re finding in the Catholic facilities, someone will ask for euthanasia, and then a team will be brought in providing pastoral care, spiritual care. These are hopefully providing in these facilities anyway, but good palliative care, all of those things. So you take the request for euthanasia, firstly as a person statement to saying what the care that I’m currently receiving isn’t working for me. And so the idea was, “Okay, let’s figure that out.”
And I was speaking to the mission director of one of our big operators. It has our facilities in almost every state. And they said, “We haven’t had someone go through with euthanasia yet despite the requests.” So look, I envisage and I hope and pray for a society where even if euthanasia’s on the books and allowed that people actually aren’t choosing it because we’re able to provide them with the care. And that’s the pure victory, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Monica Doumit:
That this is legally prohibited, but you are free to do it. But actually, I don’t want to-
Cy Kellett:
We’ll take such good care of you that you won’t.
Monica Doumit:
That you won’t.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Monica Doumit:
I don’t know. I think that’s probably the more likely scenario. I don’t know that we’re going to have these laws reversed, but please God, we can make it so rare that the laws are almost useless.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, I hope so. Canada frankly scares me. I don’t want to live in a world where the mentally ill can be killed for being mentally ill or the despondent can be killed for being… And I certainly never want to live in a world where the diagnosis is homelessness and the prescribed cure is death. That’s a world where far beyond anything we want to live in. And as much as we love the Canadians, they keep going down that road. They’re determined. It seems to go down that road.
Monica Doumit:
I don’t know. I also hope that euthanasia is still quite rare across the world, right?
Cy Kellett:
Oh, I’m actually glad to hear that. I didn’t know that, but I’m very glad to hear it.
Monica Doumit:
Yeah. Yeah. Very, very few countries, maybe about a dozen. So it’s only, and only a handful of states here in the United States, so it’s still very, very rare around the world. And maybe Canada will serve as a warning, and I’m getting onto a slightly different topic here, but in the same way that places like Sweden and the UK have started to become a bit of a warning on transitioning children and giving them puberty blockers. The UK just-
Cy Kellett:
The UK woke up.
Monica Doumit:
Yeah. Even before some countries have really started strongly going down that path. So look, without wanting even one more euthanasia death in Canada, maybe they’ll serve as a counter witness and be a warning sign to other countries that start contemplating this and say, “Look, we don’t want to be euthanizing our homeless or our disabled, or our war vets.” Which is another big one in-
Cy Kellett:
Come on.
Monica Doumit:
… Canada, people going to Veterans Affairs saying that they need help for PTSD And again, being pointed towards euthanasia. I can imagine how that would be received here in the States. You guys have such a strong respect for those who serve that the idea that that’s what we’re able to offer.
Cy Kellett:
But even our virtues are perverted when people start saying things like, “Well, this is the way to have respect for vets.” And if you fall for that, then yeah, okay, you’re a fool. But there’s no shortage of us fools, let’s put it that way. But I take hope in what you’re saying for two reasons. One, I didn’t know that euthanasia was quite as rare as you said it is, but maybe there will be these bellwethers who will be, you’ll look to them and go, “No, that that’s not what we want for our society, and so won’t go down that road.” I hope that’s the case. God bless you for the work you do in Australia.
Monica Doumit:
Thanks be to God. I love what I do. I love being in the fight.
Cy Kellett:
And you work for the Archdiocese, but what’s your title there at the Archdiocese of Sydney in Australia?
Monica Doumit:
My title is I’m the Director of Public Affairs and Engagement, which is a really-
Cy Kellett:
Oh, perfect.
Monica Doumit:
… long way of saying, I basically do the public policy for the Archdiocese. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, very good. I really thank you for taking the time to talk about it. It’s horrifying. And I’m sorry that to think of Catholic hospitals being seized, to think that Australia is that misguided in its public policy. But I know a lot of people in America will be praying for you. So thank you, Monica.
Monica Doumit:
Please do. We can use all the prayers we can get. Thank you so much.
Cy Kellett:
Monica Doumit is our guest, and thank you very much for listening. We do appreciate it. If you want to support us, you can always go to givecatholic.com and do that. And another way to support us is giving us five stars and a few nice words wherever you get this podcast that helps to grow the podcast. As always, if you’d ever like to get in touch with us, just send us an email, focus@catholic.com is our email address, focus@catholic.com. Maybe you’ve got an idea for a future episode, maybe there’s something you’d like to respond to as far as this episode goes. It’s all welcome. focus@catholic.com. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, thank you very much. We’ll see you next time. God willing right here on Catholic Answers Focus.