What is the teaching of the Church concerning “euthanasia” (a Greek word meaning “a good death”)?
The Orthodox Church teaches that euthanasia is the deliberate cessation of human life, and, as such, must be condemned as murder. However, the headlong progress of contemporary medical technology and the various means of artificially sustaining life require that theologians make more precise the Church’s approach to the problem of euthanasia and “the right of a person to put an end to his life.” Euthanasia is the act of painlessly killing hopelessly ill people. Proponents of euthanasia point out that the use of contemporary medicine and the means of treating the hopelessly ill does not lead to their recovery, but only agonisingly prolongs their dying. This in turn raises another moral question: Is it murder not to use the good things of contemporary medicine for prolonging the life of the hopelessly ill? The Fathers of the Church teach that death is unnatural for man, because man was created not for death, but for life. Death, along with suffering and illness, which we talked about in
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