Cardinal Decries Assisted-Suicide
Cardinal John O’Connor, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, interrupted a joyous Easter celebration with a somber jeremiad Sunday, decrying as “unspeakable” a recent federal appeals court ruling permitting physician-assisted suicide in New York State.
This solemn note briefly tempered the jubilation in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on the most important of Christian holidays, when the resurrection of Jesus Christ is remembered, just as the sadness over the recent death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown mitigated the euphoria inside the Abyssinian Baptist Church several miles away in Harlem.
O’Connor reminded the roughly 4,500 people in St. Patrick’s, many of whom had to stand for the duration of the hourlong service, that the Catholic Church remains staunchly opposed to euthanasia, and he warned that this “new, latest horror” could be a harbinger of worse to come.
“What makes us think that permitted lawful suicide will not become obligated suicide?” the cardinal asked, mentioning all sorts of people - elderly, indigent, disabled - who he said might feel pressure to lessen society’s burden by ending their lives.
“How frequently will people be told it is their obligation to get out of the way?” he said.
The cardinal’s remarks, delivered during a special 10:15 a.m. Easter Mass, concerned a ruling last week by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that struck down portions of New York state criminal statutes forbidding physicians to help patients commit suicide.
His sermon was not the only one in the New York metropolitan region Sunday to let matters topical intrude on moments spiritual as Christian churchgoers flooded to worship services marked by the heightened pageantry and passion associated with Easter.
At the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Rev. Calvin O. Butts 3rd briefly eulogized Brown, a son of Harlem whose gifts and grit carried him into the corridors of power in Washington. Brown died last week in a plane crash in Croatia.
“We’ve got heavy burdens on our hearts today after a long and difficult week,” Butts told hundreds at the service. “This year, the miracle of springtime kindles sad thoughts in mourning hearts.”
Butts also mentioned the recent deaths of two other prominent black Americans - Carl Stokes, the former Cleveland mayor, and W. Haywood Burns, who served as dean of the City University School of Law at Queens College - and said the meaning of Easter, with its message of resurrection, should assure everyone that while those men no longer exist in body, they endure in spirit.
In few places around the region was the spectacle of Easter more colorful than at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in upper Manhattan, where the Right Rev. Richard F. Grein, Episcopal bishop of New York, made three ceremonial knocks on the massive bronze doors of the cathedral before proceeding toward an altar bedecked with spring flowers.
At St. Patrick’s, admission was by ticket only, even for the hundreds of people forced to stand. Ushers wore white gloves, churchgoers wore their Easter best and the air was redolent of incense and perfume.
The cathedral was so packed that it was impossible to spot the many prominent New Yorkers present, and O’Connor singled out just one: Joe DiMaggio, the baseball legend. “Welcome back, Joe,” the cardinal said.
The crowd’s attention was riveted in a different fashion when a heckler appeared suddenly before the altar. A man dressed in some manner of black religious garb, waved a small container and shouted something unintelligible about HIV before being muscled out of the cathedral.