Copy of letter from Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Assisted Dying. Please note this letter contains images that are disturbing.
4.11.2019
Mr Martyn Iles
Australian Christian Lobby
Eternity House
4 Campion Street
DEAKIN ACT 2600
Dear Mr Iles,
“God uses the challenges and trials of life, in all its phases and seasons, to train us and make us better” and “Euthanasia is our vain attempt to deny and reject God’s plan for suffering”. [To quote from a poster on your ACL Facebook]
What a horrible, vindictive, abusive, sadistic God you portray! Statements like yours make it readily understandable why Australians are leaving the church in droves.
Thankfully, my concept of God is of love, empathy and compassion. I was given a brain with which to think, and that thinking motivates me to aim to live a good and moral life, yet would also enable me to rationally choose a medically assisted death should I be faced with dying with intolerable suffering. You, and your associates at ACL, are of course welcome to suffer as much as you wish, as that would be your choice, but how dare you tell others what they must endure!
Let’s take just three case examples using your twisted logic. Thousands more are readily available.
Example 1.
Jason, a victim as a young child of the paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale. You can read that Jason is certainly undergoing “the challenges and trials of life” and then you try to tell us that in some warped way your God is using these challenges to “train” Jason and make him “better”!!!!
Jason: “In 1976, when I was turning 13, I was attending the Mercy Nuns convent (St Malachy’s) at Edenhope. Father Gerry Ridsdale lived right near the school and he was the school manager. I was an altar boy and he was always asking me to come to his house, saying that he had some jobs for me to do there. My mother used to insist that I should go.
“He used to assault me at his house, in his car and at the church (including at the altar when the church was empty and locked). This went on for two years. He did everything to me that you can imagine. He penetrated me countless times.
“After each molestation, he would grant me Absolution,……”
(Ref: http://www.brokenrites.org.au/drupal/node/55 )
Example 2.
Flora, had been suffering from Multiple Sclerosis for 40 years, and for the last two years she was, quite rationally, pleading for help to die. Yet you are stating that these years of suffering are to “train” Flora and her loving daughter Tracey. You state Flora’s suffering is “God’s plan” and then cruelly say that Flora’s plea for assistance to die is her “vain attempt” to reject this plan Continue reading