EWTN portal reports that U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called assisted suicide laws “abhorrent” during budget discussions, pledging to work with lawmakers to protect people with disabilities from these laws. While Kennedy’s words may seem commendable on the surface, his entire framing operates within a naturalistic, humanistic paradigm that completely ignores the supernatural reality of sin, the redemptive value of suffering, and the absolute sovereignty of God over life and death — revealing that even those who oppose the fruits of Modernism remain infected with its root errors.
The Sovereignty of God Over Life and Death: The Missing Foundation
Kennedy’s statement that “we can’t be a moral society” with assisted suicide laws in place appeals to a vague, horizontal notion of morality — a morality detached from the lex divina, the eternal law of God. The Catholic position on suicide and euthanasia is not grounded in sociological concerns about “moral society” or disability rights; it is rooted in the absolute, inalienable dominion of the Creator over His creation. God alone is the Author and Lord of life (Wisdom 16:13; Acts 17:25). To take one’s own life, or to assist another in doing so, is not merely a violation of disability rights legislation — it is an act of rebellion against the sovereignty of Almighty God, a usurpation of a prerogative that belongs to Him alone.
Pope Pius XI, in the encyclical Quas Primas (1925), proclaimed with unmistakable clarity: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The kingship of Christ is not a pious metaphor — it is a binding reality over every nation, every legislature, and every human act. Kennedy’s appeal to “morality” without any reference to Christ the King reveals the very secularism that Pius XI identified as “the plague that poisons human society.”
The Redemptive Value of Suffering: The Great Silence
Perhaps the most damning omission in Kennedy’s remarks — and in the entire EWTN article — is the complete silence on the supernatural meaning of suffering. The Catholic teaching on the value of human suffering was articulated with extraordinary clarity by Pope St. John Paul I (Albino Luciani), and before him by countless Fathers and Doctors of the Church. But more fundamentally, the Cross of Christ teaches us that suffering, when united to His Passion, possesses infinite redemptive value. St. Paul writes: “Now 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 entire assisted suicide industry is built upon a lie: that suffering is meaningless, that a life of dependency or pain is a life not worth living — a premise that, as the Delaware lawsuit cited in the article notes, creates a “state-endorsed narrative” directing people with disabilities “to suicide help and not suicide prevention.” This is not merely discrimination; it is a practical denial of the Gospel, a declaration that the Cross of Christ is foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18). Yet Kennedy, for all his correct instinct that these laws are “abhorrent,” never once invokes the Cross, grace, the soul, or the supernatural destiny of man. His morality is a morality of this world only — precisely the naturalism condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (propositions 56–58), which denies that moral laws require divine sanction and reduces all rectitude to material well-being.
The Canadian Abomination: A Prophetic Warning Unheeded
Kennedy correctly notes that euthanasia has become the fifth-leading cause of death in Canada, and that the country is considering expanding MAID to individuals whose sole underlying condition is mental illness. This is the logical terminus of the culture of death: once the principle is admitted that the state may authorize the killing of its citizens on the grounds of suffering or disability, there is no rational limiting principle. Corruptio optimi pessima — the corruption of the best is the worst. What began as “end-of-life care” has metastasized into a system where the vulnerable are actively steered toward death.
Yet the article and Kennedy’s response treat this as a policy problem to be solved through legislative advocacy, rather than what it is: a manifestation of a civilization that has formally rejected Christ the King. Pius XI warned in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The Canadian euthanasia regime is not an aberration within a sound moral order — it is the fruit of a society that has systematically expelled God from public life. No amount of disability rights litigation will heal this wound without the restoration of the social reign of Christ.
The American Complicity: Twelve States and the District of Columbia
The article notes that assisted suicide is legal in 12 states and Washington, D.C., with at least 14,000 Americans having died by assisted suicide since 1997. This is not a peripheral issue — it is a mass slaughter of the vulnerable, carried out under the color of law and with the approval of medical professionals who have abandoned their Hippocratic oath. The three ongoing lawsuits mentioned — in Delaware, Colorado, and California — allege discrimination against people with disabilities, and rightly so. But the discrimination runs deeper than any human rights framework can address: it is discrimination against the very image of God in the suffering person, whose dignity is not contingent on autonomy, productivity, or freedom from pain, but on the fact that he or she is created in the likeness of God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18–19).
The lawsuits cited in the article invoke the Americans with Disabilities Act and constitutional arguments — legitimate tools within the secular order, but utterly insufficient to address the spiritual catastrophe at hand. The Church, before the conciliar revolution, taught with one voice that the civil order itself must recognize the authority of Christ and the moral law. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus, condemned the proposition that “the civil authority may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (proposition 44), and affirmed that the Church possesses full authority to teach and govern in these matters. The modernist retreat from this teaching has created the very vacuum in which the culture of death flourishes.
The EWTN Portal: Reporting Without the Supernatural
The EWTN article itself is a case study in the post-conciliar inability to present Catholic truth with supernatural force. It reports facts, quotes lawsuits, and relays Kennedy’s remarks — but at no point does it invoke the teaching of the Church with the authority demanded by the gravity of the subject. There is no mention of the Council of Trent’s anathemas against those who deny the necessity of the moral law, no reference to the condemnation of suicide in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, no appeal to the prayers for the dying or the Church’s ancient care for the sick and suffering. The article treats assisted suicide as a political controversy rather than a mortal sin and a crime against God.
This is the fruit of the conciliar revolution: a Catholic media apparatus that reports on the symptoms of apostasy without diagnosing the disease, that quotes lawsuits without invoking the moral law, that calls assisted suicide “abhorrent” without declaring it what the Church has always declared it to be — a grave sin against the Fifth Commandment, an offense against the sovereignty of God, and an act that, if unrepented, leads to eternal damnation.
Conclusion: The Only Remedy
Kennedy is correct that assisted suicide laws are “abhorrent.” But his remedy — working within the existing political framework to “protect” the disabled — is as inadequate as applying a bandage to a mortal wound. The only true remedy is the one proclaimed by Pius XI: the restoration of the Kingdom of Christ over individuals, families, and states. Until nations formally recognize the sovereignty of Christ the King and order their laws in accordance with His commandments, the culture of death will continue to advance. No lawsuit, no disability rights legislation, no political advocacy — however well-intentioned — can substitute for the conversion of society to the Gospel. Regnum Christi in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis — the Kingdom of Christ on earth is peace to men of good will. Without that Kingdom, there is only the abyss.
Source:
Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy calls assisted suicide laws ‘abhorrent’ (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 23.04.2026