National Catholic Register portal reports on Father Larry Holland, a 79-year-old Vancouver priest recovering from a hip fracture at Vancouver General Hospital, who was twice offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) by healthcare staff who knew he was a Catholic priest and morally opposed to euthanasia. The article details the growing normalization of euthanasia in Canada—now approaching 100,000 assisted deaths—and the increasing institutional pressure on medical professionals to proactively initiate MAID discussions with vulnerable patients, including those with strong religious objections. While the article presents the incident as shocking and highlights the priest’s resistance, it fails to anchor its critique in the immutable moral theology of the pre-conciliar Church, instead framing the issue through the lens of “coercion” and “sensitivity” rather than the absolute, divinely revealed prohibition against the direct killing of the innocent—a silence that reveals the conciliar Church’s own complicity in the culture of death it claims to oppose.
The Gravity of the Sin: Euthanasia as Direct Murder and Apostasy from Divine Law
The article recounts how Father Larry Holland, a priest of the Archdiocese of Vancouver, was twice offered euthanasia—Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID)—by healthcare professionals who were fully aware of his priestly state and his moral opposition to the practice. The doctor reportedly raised the option of MAID should his condition deteriorate, and weeks later a nurse repeated the offer, ostensibly out of compassion for his pain. The article quotes Father Holland: “It’s a false compassion, really.” Yet this characterization, while true, barely scratches the surface of the theological abyss into which Canada’s medical establishment—and indeed the post-conciliar Church—has plunged.
The Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), is not a suggestion subject to pastoral accommodation or cultural contextualization. It is an absolute, divinely promulgated moral law that admits of no exception for reasons of compassion, autonomy, or perceived quality of life. The direct and intentional killing of an innocent person is a mortal sin of the gravest order, a crime against the sovereignty of God, who alone has dominion over life and death. As the Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches, the prohibition against killing extends to the deliberate termination of human life, whether one’s own or another’s, and no human authority—medical, legal, or otherwise—can licitly authorize such an act.
The article quotes Father Larry Lynn, the archdiocese’s pro-life chaplain: “This must surely be among the most appalling examples of Canada’s coercive and insensitive euthanasia regime… It places the medical practitioner into the role of the devil, tempting a vulnerable person into mortal sin.” This is theologically precise, and it is one of the few moments in the article where the gravity of the sin is named with appropriate severity. To offer a fellow human being the means of self-destruction, particularly when that person is consecrated to God and publicly opposed to the act, is indeed to assume the role of the tempter in Eden: “You will not surely die… you will be like God” (Genesis 3:4-5). The serpent’s promise is recast in medical garb: “You will not surely suffer… you will have control over your death.” The lie is the same.
The Silence of the Conciliar Church: Omission of the Supernatural Order
What is most striking about the article—and most revealing of the conciliar Church’s theological impoverishment—is what it omits. The article frames the euthanasia debate almost entirely in naturalistic terms: coercion, patient autonomy, sensitivity, and the vulnerability of the elderly. These are legitimate concerns, but they are secondary to the primary issue, which the article barely addresses: euthanasia is a direct violation of the natural law and the divine positive law, and it constitutes a mortal sin that destroys the state of grace and imperils the soul for eternity.
The article quotes Father Ronald Sequeira, the Catholic chaplain at VGH: “Patients often don’t realize that suffering is redemptive… God makes us more pure, more strong, through the suffering when we offer it up.” This is true and reflects the authentic Catholic teaching on the value of suffering united to the Cross of Christ. St. Paul writes: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Colossians 1:24). The Imitation of Christ teaches that suffering, when borne with patience and faith, is a means of purification and spiritual growth. Yet the article fails to draw the necessary conclusion: if suffering is redemptive, then the deliberate destruction of the human person to avoid it is not merely a medical error or a failure of compassion—it is a rejection of the Cross itself, a practical denial of the Christian understanding of death as a passage to eternal life rather than an evil to be avoided at all costs.
The article also fails to mention the teaching of Pope Pius XII, who in his 1957 address to anesthesiologists affirmed that the direct killing of the innocent is never permissible, even at the request of the patient, and that the duty of the physician is to alleviate suffering, not to eliminate the sufferer. It fails to cite the Declaration on Euthanasia issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II in 1980, which, despite the conciliar context of its issuance, at least nominally reaffirmed the absolute prohibition of euthanasia. And it fails to invoke the teaching of the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX, which condemns the proposition that “the violation of any solemn oath, as well as any wicked and flagitious action repugnant to the eternal law, is not only not blamable but is altogether lawful and worthy of the highest praise when done through love of country” (Proposition 64)—a principle that applies with equal force to the violation of the Fifth Commandment done through a false notion of compassion.
The Institutionalization of Murder: Canada’s Euthanasia Regime as a Fruit of Laicism
The article notes that Canada is approaching 100,000 assisted dying deaths and that healthcare professionals are increasingly encouraged to initiate MAID discussions with patients, including those who have not requested it. It references a 2023 Health Canada document urging health authorities to adopt “practice standards” requiring doctors and nurse practitioners to raise MAID with certain patients, and a document from the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers that recommends against assuming patients oppose MAID because of their faith. The article quotes Amanda Achtman of Canadian Physicians for Life: “Simply being offered euthanasia already kills the person, because it defeats and deflates their sense of self-worth and value.”
This is a profound observation, but it must be situated within the broader context of the laicism and secularism that Pope Pius XI condemned in his encyclical Quas Primas as the root cause of the modern world’s apostasy. The article quotes Pius XI’s teaching that “the plague which poisons human society is the secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors,” and that this plague began with “the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations” and the Church’s authority to teach, govern, and lead men to eternal happiness. Canada’s euthanasia regime is not an isolated policy failure—it is the logical and inevitable fruit of a society that has expelled God from public life, denied the authority of His Church, and replaced the moral law with the autonomous will of the individual.
The article references Bill C-260, introduced by Conservative MP Garnett Genuis, which would prohibit federal employees from proactively offering or recommending MAID, and Alberta’s proposed Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act, which would restrict healthcare professionals from providing information about MAID unless the patient initiates the discussion. These are commendable efforts, but they are palliative measures in a society that has already embraced the culture of death. As long as the reign of Christ the King is denied in the public square—as long as the state refuses to acknowledge the authority of the Church and the binding force of the divine law—such legislative efforts will be insufficient to reverse the tide. Pius XI was unequivocal: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed” (Ubi Arcano). Canada’s euthanasia regime is the direct consequence of this foundational destruction.
The “Compassion” of the Devil: Eucharistic Adoration as the True Remedy
The article quotes Father Holland: “Even enduring pain ‘can encourage growth’… It can motivate you, it can open up new worlds, new vistas, new opportunities, including enriched relationships.” This is true, but it is incomplete. The fullness of the Catholic teaching on suffering is not merely that it can lead to personal growth or enriched relationships, but that it can be united to the sufferings of Christ and offered to the Father for the salvation of souls. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the re-presentation of Calvary, and it is through participation in this sacrifice—both sacramentally and through the oblation of one’s own sufferings—that the Christian finds the strength to endure and the hope of eternal glory.
The article’s failure to invoke the Most Holy Sacrifice as the ultimate remedy against the temptation of euthanasia is symptomatic of the conciliar Church’s own devaluation of the Mass. Where the pre-conciliar Church taught that the Mass is the “source and summit of the Christian life” (a phrase from Vatican II that, in its original context, referred to the propitiatory sacrifice, but which has been reinterpreted by modernists to mean a communal meal), the post-conciliar Church has reduced the Mass to a fraternal assembly, stripping it of its sacrificial character and its power to sanctify suffering. The Canadian bishops, who have presided over this liturgical revolution, are themselves complicit in the spiritual impoverishment that makes euthanasia seem like a reasonable option to the suffering faithful.
Conclusion: The Duty of the Faithful and the Failure of the Hierarchy
Father Holland’s witness in rejecting the offer of euthanasia is commendable and reflects the integrity of his priestly vocation. His admission that he could “feel the temptation” is a testament to the reality of human weakness and the need for grace. But the article’s failure to ground its critique in the fullness of Catholic moral theology—its silence on the absolute prohibition of the direct killing of the innocent, its omission of the redemptive value of suffering united to the Cross, its failure to invoke the Most Holy Sacrifice as the source of supernatural strength—reveals the conciliar Church’s own theological bankruptcy.
The faithful must resist the culture of death not merely by opposing legislative proposals or advocating for “sensitivity” in medical practice, but by professing the fullness of the Catholic faith: the absolute sovereignty of God over life and life, the binding force of the natural law and the divine positive law, the redemptive value of suffering, and the necessity of the Most Holy Sacrifice for the sanctification of the world. Until the conciliar hierarchy repudiates its own complicity in the culture of death—until it restores the Traditional Latin Mass, reaffirms the absolute prohibition of euthanasia, and demands the public recognition of Christ the King over all nations—it will continue to preside over the spiritual ruin it claims to oppose.
Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Outside the true Church—the Church of all ages, not the conciliar sect occupying the Vatican—there is no salvation, and there is no remedy for the culture of death. The faithful must seek that Church, cling to her immutable doctrine, and resist, with every fiber of their being, the modernist apostasy that has reduced the most sacred mysteries of the faith to questions of “compassion” and “sensitivity.”
Source:
Canadian Priest Offered Euthanasia Twice While Recovering From Hip Fracture (ncregister.com)
Date: 04.05.2026