The Catholic position - Thierse: Suicide as the epitome of self-determination? No!
he former President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Thierse, is a committed Catholic and sharply criticizes the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling on Section 217. “As a Christian, I see life as a gift,” he said. Christians should contradict the tendency to "make suicide normal."
On Wednesday in February 2020, the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court declared the provision in Section 217 of Criminal Law, which made the “commercial promotion of suicide” a criminal offense, null and void. The constitutional judges justified this with the fact that the general right of personality also includes a right to self-determined death.
Susanne Fritz: Mr. Thierse, you commented personally on the judgment in the FAZ in February, saying that the judgment “deeply affected and disturbed you”. As an avowed Catholic, what upset you?
Wolfgang Thierse: What really irritated me about it is the heroization of suicide and the absolutization of autonomy. The court makes suicide the epitome of human self-determination and I think that is fatal. I expressly say that as a Christian I say yes to self-determination, but no to the fact that suicide is made the epitome of self-determination.
"Being born is not an act of autonomy, nor is getting sick"
Fritz: How do you justify your position theologically? There are also positions, for example in the Protestant Church, which, like you, emphasize the individual's right to self-determination, but at the same time find it right that people are allowed to take responsibility for the last phase of their lives and welcome this judgment. For example, the leading bishop of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany, Ralf Meister. Theologically he justified his position with the fact that God has given us responsibility for our lives and that the responsibility applies to the last breath. How do you justify your position theologically?
Thierse: To be born is not an act of human autonomy, to love and to be loved is not an act of human autonomy, nor to get sick. As a Christian, I understand life as a gift, love as a gift, and derive responsibility for love, responsibility for life, but also the fundamental unavailability of it. And derive from this that Christians should insist on the right of the weak, the sick, the suffering, the aging and that they should resist a tendency to make suicide a matter of course normality, the right of everyone. That's what it's about me.
Fritz: But there are also people in Germany who are not influenced by Christianity and who support this judgment. According to a representative survey in February, the majority even said: "I support medical euthanasia."
Thierse:One simply has to remember that suicide and suicide accompaniment, as long as it is not businesslike, has not been punishable until now and that the right to suicide assistance has so far been a right of defense, a right to protection from unbearable agony at the end of life. Now the judgment has made a reversal, a right to unproblematic suicide and the duty of the state to support and grant it. Peter Dabrock, the long-time chairman of the Ethics Council, called this a radical break with the tried and tested legal culture; our legal culture has so far been designed to consider the protection of life as much as respect for self-determination and human autonomy has been interpreted in a way that is friendly to life. One should also discuss this with society,
"Task of the legislature to develop a legislative protection concept"
Fritz: You mentioned the state's duty to protect life, as our Basic Law also provides. Now it is the case that the judges in Karlsruhe said and emphasized that alternatives must be taken into account, i.e. that it must also be checked whether the freedom of responsibility for the suicide wish is granted. That a thorough consideration must precede. Isn't there enough protection there?
Thierse: That's what's irritating about the judgment. There it is reported that 90 percent of all suicides come from mentally ill people, i.e. take place without free responsibility, reference is made to Holland, where there was the case of a woman who was injected to death against her currently justified will because she was in an earlier one The living will had provided that, but now no longer wanted it and a court agreed with the doctors. In Holland, the mentally ill are also killed on request. In Canada I read, there is a push for medical accelerated death to be made possible for the purpose of obtaining organ donations.
The Constitutional Court knew all this and nevertheless pronounced this judgment and therefore, I say, it is now the task of the legislature, also called upon by this contradicting judgment of the court, to develop a legislative protection concept that serves the purpose of suicide prevention, which actually really protects self-determined decision, i.e. its voluntariness, its seriousness, its permanence. For me this means, for example, that the desire for suicide assistance must not be the subject of an advance directive, that it is checked very carefully. So these things are now to be discussed and dealt with by the legislature so that a culture does not arise where suicide simply becomes something quite everyday, taken for granted and where the pressure on the elderly,
"The pandemic crisis shows how wrong the Federal Constitutional Court is"
Fritz: Now the Karlsruhe judges have also explicitly said that the legislature can make suicide and euthanasia subject to strict legal requirements, i.e. regulate it. You mentioned that you believe there may be social pressure on the old and the weak, but I suspect you are trying to break the ethical barrier. Is that correct?
Thierse: I know that this will be said immediately, I know that mentally ill people are also killed on request in Holland and I have read that suicide has already become the second most common cause of death there. I don't want to dramatize, but you should consider all of this, especially at such a sensitive point, at the end of life. And I think that Christians, that the Church should stand up for the right to life of the weak, the sick, the suffering, absolutely. And with great passion. And not give in to taking a comfortable path
Fritz: Don't you think that the corona pandemic has shown that even a secular state is very willing to respond to the elderly and the weak and demands a high level of solidarity? We took planes out of the skies during lockdown and nearly ceased economic life to protect the old and the weak. Didn't one also trust the secular society and the moral responsibility of the secular society?
Thierse: I do think that the pandemic crisis has shown how wrong the Constitutional Court is with its absolutizing of autonomy. In this crisis we experienced our dependence on one another as human beings and our need for solidarity, the dramatic need for protection for our health, for our lives and the state's obligation to do so. This is the exact opposite of the ideology of this constitutional court ruling. I want to rely on this society, but precisely because the Constitutional Court has passed such a peculiarly irritating judgment, it is now a matter of bringing precisely this experience of the need for solidarity, of people's need for protection, of society, into law on this issue too .
"Christians and the churches are not the teachers of everyone else"
Fritz: Mr. Thierse, do you think that you - or that one - finds political majorities nowadays with such a Catholic attitude towards suicide and euthanasia?
Thierse: Christians are not there to hide their beliefs. They should articulate them and bring them into the debate that is taking place and which must also take place. You must not leave it to the others, I think that is a natural duty that we as Christians have and also to remember an elementary context: human dignity is the most important value of our constitution, but life is the elementary prerequisite for human dignity and that is why the protection of life is also a very important good for the sake of human dignity.
Fritz: That is certainly also a moral stance that non-Christian people also support.
Thierse: I think so.
Fritz: I would like to come back to my question: Do you believe that a Christian position on suicide and euthanasia can be politically enforced nowadays? That there are majorities for?
Thierse: During this week you are negotiating Jewish, Islamic and Hindu views on this, they are all part of this society, and articulating their views publicly and bringing them into political, discussion and decision-making processes is something that goes without saying. I am not convinced that Christians and the Church are the teachers of all others, but neither are they there to be silent and to accept everything, but to argue and interfere vigorously, especially in such fundamental questions of understanding human life, human dignity, human dignity even at the end of life.
