CNA Deutsch, a service of EWTN News, reports on pro-life groups condemning the “glorification” of the assisted suicide of 89-year-old twin entertainers Alice and Ellen Kessler in Grünwald, Germany. The German Society for Humane Dying (DGHS) facilitated their deaths on November 17, 2025, with media outlets like Tagesschau framing the act as an exercise in “self-determination.” Alexandra Linder of the Federal Association for the Right to Life warned of the “Werther effect” – increased suicide rates following sensationalized reporting – while Eva Maria Welskop-Deffaa of the German Caritas Association criticized the “romanticization” of suicide pressuring elderly women to avoid being a “burden.” This macabre spectacle epitomizes Germany’s apostasy from the divine moral order.
Assisted Suicide as Blasphemy Against Divine Sovereignty
The DGHS’s orchestration of the Kessler twins’ death constitutes direct rebellion against the Fifth Commandment. Pius XII’s 1957 allocution to medical professionals condemned euthanasia as “intrinsece contra naturam” (intrinsically against nature), emphasizing that “nobody but God can give life and nobody but He alone can claim it back” (Allocution to Doctors, February 24, 1957). Canon 2350 §1 of the 1917 Code mandated excommunication for those committing homicide, including self-murder. The twins’ lawyer and doctor collaborators incur latae sententiae excommunication under this law still binding in the Church’s perpetual discipline.
German media’s celebration of this double suicide as “autonomy” exposes their servility to the “cult of man” condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864), which rejected the notion that “human reason is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood” (Proposition 3). By omitting the eternal consequences of suicide – eternal damnation for those dying unrepentant in mortal sin (Council of Trent, Session XIV) – journalists commit grave spiritual fraud. Their silence on the twins’ spiritual state reveals a naturalistic worldview where bodily decay trumps immortal souls.
German Bureaucracy of Death and Ecclesiastical Complicity
The DGHS operates as a death cult under Germany’s 2020 euthanasia law, which violates divine law by empowering lawyers to assess “autonomy.” As Pius XI declared in Casti Connubii, “no human law can abolish the natural and primeval right of marriage… nor can it destroy the rights and duties of the spouses” – equally applicable to life’s inviolability. The DGHS’s financial interest in recruiting members (€1,200 fee for suicide assistance) confirms this as a commercialized murder industry.
Welskop-Deffaa’s call for “suicide prevention” while avoiding explicit condemnation of euthanasia as intrinsically evil exemplifies the German hierarchy’s cowardice. Not one German “bishop” invoked Leviticus 19:16 (“You shall not stand by idly when your neighbor’s life is at stake“) or canon 1398’s prohibition of cooperation in suicide. Their silence echoes the modernist Syllabus error that “the Church ought to be separated from the State” (Proposition 55), enabling anti-life laws.
Euthanasia as Fruit of Post-Conciliar Apostasy
Germany’s embrace of state-sanctioned killing flows directly from Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae, which falsely declared “the right to religious freedom” – enabling moral relativism. As Leo XIII warned in Libertas Praestantissimum, “when once man’s mind has been emancipated from the bonds of divine authority… it will necessarily come to pass that liberty of thought and liberty of action will be abused.” The Kessler case proves this trajectory: from “religious freedom” to “death freedom.”
The media’s omission of palliative care alternatives – which could have eased the twins’ fears through spiritual accompaniment and redemptive suffering – reveals a society that has abandoned Christ the King. Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925) mandated that “rulers of states” must “publicly honor and obey” Christ’s reign, yet Germany criminalizes Catholic moral teaching while subsidizing euthanasia. This inversion fulfills Paul’s prophecy of the “mystery of iniquity” (2 Thess 2:7).
Conclusion: Only Christ’s Reign Offers True Mercy
The Kessler tragedy exposes modernity’s false mercy – eliminating sufferers rather than loving them. As St. Augustine taught, “suicide is a detestable and damnable wickedness” (City of God, I.20), for it rejects God’s sovereignty over life’s beginning and end. Authentic compassion demands proclaiming the Four Last Things – Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell – not romanticizing despair. Until Germany kneels before Christ the King, its “culture of care” will remain a culture of death.
Source:
Pro-life groups condemn ‘glorification’ of Kessler twins’ assisted suicide in Germany (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 20.11.2025