The EWTN News portal reports that New York Archbishop Ronald Hicks has voiced opposition to the state’s assisted suicide law set to take effect on August 5, 2026, describing it as an “assault on human life” and a step toward a “complete throwaway mentality.” While Archbishop Hicks’ statements contain elements of natural moral reasoning that align with Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life, a thorough examination from the perspective of integral Catholic faith reveals the profound inadequacy, theological cowardice, and modernist subtext that pervade not only this article but the entire framework within which such “opposition” is articulated. The conciliar sect’s engagement with the culture of death is characterized by a fatal compromise: it opposes the most extreme manifestations of euthanasia while simultaneously accepting the underlying philosophical premises that make such legislation inevitable.
The Inadequacy of Natural Law Arguments Against Assisted Suicide
Archbishop Hicks frames his opposition primarily in terms accessible to natural reason, warning of a “slippery slope” and invoking the specter of insurance companies incentivizing cheaper alternatives to treatment. He writes: “How long before this so-called ‘compassion’ for the terminally ill evolves from a ‘choice’ into an expectation to kill oneself for all sorts of vulnerable individuals, including those with disabilities, the elderly, and those in impoverished and medically underserved communities?”
This argument, while not entirely without merit, operates entirely within the framework of secular utilitarian ethics and liberal individualism. It reduces the sanctity of human life to a matter of social consequences and pragmatic outcomes rather than grounding it in the imago Dei and the absolute, inviolable dignity conferred by God upon every human person from the moment of conception until natural death. The Catholic position on euthanasia is not merely that it leads to bad social outcomes — it is that it constitutes a grave violation of the Fifth Commandment, a direct assault on the sovereignty of God over life and death, and a mortal sin that places the soul in eternal jeopardy.
Pope Pius XII, in his address to the International Congress of Anesthesiologists (1924), declared: “No one is obliged to use extraordinary means to preserve life, but it is never lawful to kill a human being, even at his own request.” The 1980 Declaration on Euthanasia by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued under Pope John Paul I’s brief pontificate and maintained by the authentic magisterial tradition, states unequivocally: “No one can make an attempt on the life of an innocent person without violating a fundamental moral norm, without committing a gravely immoral act.”
Yet nowhere in Archbishop Hicks’ statements does one find the unambiguous declaration that assisted suicide is intrinsically evil — that it is always and everywhere a mortal sin, regardless of circumstances, intentions, or “safeguards.” The language of “slippery slopes” and “evolving expectations” implicitly concedes the legitimacy of the act itself under certain conditions, merely arguing about where to draw the line. This is the hallmark of modernist moral theology: the abandonment of absolute moral norms in favor of situational ethics dressed in Catholic vestments.
The Omission of Supernatural Truth: The State of Grace and Eternal Judgment
Perhaps the most damning silence in this entire article is the complete absence of any reference to the supernatural dimension of the euthanasia question. There is no mention of the state of grace, no warning about the eternal consequences of procuring one’s own death, no reference to the reality of particular judgment, heaven, hell, or purgatory. The dying are counseled to consider “alternatives such as hospice and palliative care, or even induced comas, to pass with ‘peace’ into the next life” — but this “peace” is presented as a psychological comfort rather than the supernatural fruit of a life lived in communion with God through the sacraments.
The Catholic Church has always taught that suffering, particularly the suffering of the dying, has redemptive value when united to the Passion of Christ. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to remind the world that Christ’s authority extends over every aspect of human life, including its final moments. The suffering of the dying is not a meaningless affliction to be eliminated by pharmaceutical intervention — it is the final purification, the last participation in the Cross that precedes the glory of the Resurrection.
Archbishop Hicks invokes the example of Pope Francis’s final public appearance: “We saw the beauty of a natural death exemplified just over a year ago when Pope Francis, clearly weakened by illness and age, traveled through St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile on Easter Sunday, demonstrating the dignity of life even while suffering the afflictions and ailments that would claim his life the very next day.”
This invocation is deeply problematic on multiple levels. First, it treats the death of a manifest heretic and apostate — one who spent his pontificate systematically undermining Catholic doctrine, promoting the “throwaway culture” in other respects, and signing the Abu Dhabi Declaration which states that “God wills the pluralism and diversity of religions” — as a model of Christian dying. Second, it reduces the dignity of natural death to a public spectacle, a media event, rather than the profoundly supernatural reality of the soul’s departure from the body and its encounter with divine justice. Third, and most critically, it completely ignores the teaching of the Church that the dignity of natural death is inseparable from the reception of the viaticum — the Holy Eucharist given to the dying — and the Apostolic Blessing, neither of which the conciliar sect can validly confer since its “Mass” is a Protestant memorial meal devoid of propitiatory sacrifice and its “sacraments” are null and void.
The Conciliar Sect’s Complicity in the Culture of Death
The article’s framing reveals the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the conciliar sect’s opposition to assisted suicide: it opposes the act while accepting the philosophy that makes the act possible. The same conciliar apparatus that now expresses concern about assisted suicide in New York spent decades dismantling the theological, liturgical, and moral foundations that would render such legislation unthinkable.
It was the conciliar revolution that gutted the Catholic understanding of the redemptive value of suffering, replacing the theology of the Cross with a therapeutic, feel-good spirituality centered on “quality of life” and “personal autonomy.” It was the post-conciliar “reform” that emptied the churches of the faithful, leaving millions of Catholics without sound catechesis, without the sacraments, and without any understanding of why euthanasia is gravely sinful. It was the conciliar sect that embraced the modernist proposition — condemned by Pope St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907) — that “the progress of sciences requires a reform of the concept of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, Revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption” (Proposition 64).
The conciliar sect cannot credibly oppose assisted suicide while simultaneously promoting the very modernist errors that created the cultural conditions for its acceptance. One cannot reject the culture of death while embracing the “hermeneutic of continuity” that treats the Second Vatican Council — with its religious liberty, its ecumenism, its anthropocentric turn — as a legitimate development of doctrine. The assisted suicide legislation in New York is not an aberration from the modernist project — it is its logical and inevitable fruit.
The Disability Rights Advocate and the Limits of Natural Compassion
The article quotes Jose Hernandez, a C-5 quadriplegic and disability rights advocate, who warns that society already treats people with disabilities as a “burden” and that insurance companies would be incentivized to approve the cheaper alternative of assisted suicide. His personal testimony — that his mother was given six months to live when he was eight but survived another thirteen years — is presented as an argument against the reliability of terminal diagnoses.
While Mr. Hernandez’s concerns are understandable from a natural perspective, the article’s reliance on his testimony reveals the poverty of the conciliar sect’s engagement with the euthanasia question. The Catholic response to disability is not merely that disabled persons should not be pressured into suicide — it is that every human life, regardless of its physical or mental condition, possesses infinite dignity because it is created by God and, if baptized, incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches: “The life of the body is not to be despised, since it is a gift of God, and it is our duty to preserve it for His glory and for the salvation of our souls.”
The conciliar sect’s failure to ground its opposition to euthanasia in this supernatural reality reduces Catholic moral witness to a species of secular humanitarianism indistinguishable from the arguments of any other religious or non-religious organization. When Archbishop Hicks warns of a “throwaway mentality,” he is echoing the language of secular bioethicists rather than proclaiming the unchanging truth of the Catholic Faith.
The “Slippery Slope” Fallacy and the Absence of Dogmatic Clarity
Archbishop Hicks warns: “What begins as a personal choice could lead to situations where external forces, such as government agencies or insurance companies, begin to influence or even dictate end-of-life decisions.”
This “slippery slope” argument, while empirically observable, is theologically insufficient. The Catholic Church does not oppose euthanasia because it might lead to worse outcomes — she opposes it because it is intrinsically evil, a direct violation of the divine law that admits of no exceptions, no “safeguards,” and no circumstances in which it could be morally permissible. The 1980 Declaration on Euthanasia states: “Euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person.”
By framing the argument in terms of consequences rather than intrinsic morality, Archbishop Hicks implicitly concedes the modernist premise that moral norms are subject to revision based on circumstances, social pressures, and evolving cultural norms. This is precisely the error condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), which rejects the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80).
The Silence on the True Remedy: The Sacraments and the Life of Grace
The most conspicuous absence in this entire discussion is any mention of the true Catholic remedy for the despair that drives individuals to seek assisted suicide: the sacramental life of the Church. There is no mention of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, which Pope St. Pius X described as the sacrament that “raises the soul to the hope of heavenly glory and detaches it from the love of earthly things.” There is no mention of Confession, by which the dying are restored to the state of grace and prepared for their encounter with God. There is no mention of the Holy Eucharist as viaticum — the “bread for the journey” by which the dying are strengthened for the passage from this life to eternity.
The conciliar sect, having reduced the Mass to a communal meal and the sacraments to symbolic rituals, has effectively deprived the faithful of the very means by which they would find the grace and strength to face suffering and death with supernatural courage. It is no coincidence that the rise of euthanasia legislation has accompanied the collapse of Catholic sacramental practice — the two phenomena are causally linked, and the conciliar revolution bears primary responsibility for both.
Conclusion: The Bankruptcy of Conciliar “Opposition”
Archbishop Hicks’s opposition to assisted suicide in New York, while superficially commendable, reveals the profound bankruptcy of the conciliar sect’s engagement with the culture of death. By framing the argument in terms of natural law, slippery slopes, and social consequences rather than the intrinsic evil of the act and the supernatural destiny of the human soul, the conciliar hierarchy demonstrates that it has internalized the very modernist errors it purports to oppose.
The true Catholic position on euthanasia is not a matter of “vigilance” against legislative overreach — it is a matter of absolute moral clarity rooted in the unchanging teaching of the Church: Thou shalt not kill. No “safeguards,” no “waiting periods,” and no “witness requirements” can render the deliberate killing of an innocent human person morally permissible. The conciliar sect’s failure to proclaim this truth with clarity and authority is not merely a pastoral shortcoming — it is a manifestation of the systemic apostasy that has characterized the post-conciliar era.
The faithful who seek to preserve the integral Catholic faith must recognize that authentic opposition to euthanasia is inseparable from opposition to the modernist revolution that has made it possible. There can be no compromise with the culture of death, and there can be no reconciliation with the conciliar sect that has facilitated its advance. As the Syllabus of Errors reminds us, the Church cannot come to terms with the spirit of the age — she must proclaim the Kingship of Christ over every aspect of human life, from conception to natural death, without equivocation or compromise.
Source:
New York Archbishop Hicks calls assisted suicide an ‘assault’ on human life (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 10.06.2026