IN CANADA FAITH CONVICTIONS ABOUT ASSISTED SUICIDE DO NOT MATTER

Death on request or aid to suicide violates deeply-rooted moral beliefs of most faiths which deem it to be ethically unjustifiable. Those beliefs do not matter any longer. In the past these beliefs have certainly influenced civic laws in Canada that prohibited euthanasia and assisted suicide. Twelve years ago the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against physician-assisted suicide when Sue Rodriguez petitioned to end her life. Subsequent cases repeatedly challenged that ruling? Sufferers, families of sufferers, and journalists lobbied for approval of assisted death by emotionally describing the petitioners’ desire to leave their pain behind.

REPEATING THE PAST IS ASSURED WHEN WE FORGET THE PAST

The title is an axiom for every pursuit known to humanity from politics to religion. It is by no means original with me, since Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905) that: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Yet on this rainy day her in Lourmarin I write and I have a modest agenda in this brief dip into history where I presently reside.

Here in Lourmarin stands a Protestant church, unusual among Provencal villages dominated by Catholic cathedrals. Fifteen kilometres from Lourmarin, in Mérindol, a massacre of 3,000 villagers occurred. These innocents, known as Waldensians (or Vaudois), after their organizer, Pierre Vaudès (Anglicized to Valdo), emerged first in Lyon in the 1170's. They believed in the priesthood of believers, congregational polity, preached in local language, preached from the Bible, rejected ecclesiastical authority, had a low view of some sacraments and soon came into conflict with the Catholic church, that declared them heretics by 1215. This Mérindol genocide happened in 1245, spread to other villages including Lourmarin, which was burnt to the ground because the population was predominantly Waldensian. In time, protection and freedom of religion was granted and revoked from one French king to another and from one Pope to another. The Waldensians built a church in Lourmarin in the 1600’s, but in 1663 the temple was destroyed under order of Louis XIV with his campaign of une foi, un loi, un roi.

Finally in 1805 permission was granted to buy a piece of land on which to build a church.. The Protestant community of Lourmarin did not have the means to finance the entire construction of their church and the Municipal Council came to their aid and decided in 1811 to pay for the building of the church. The neighboring village of Puyvert and its protestant community contributed the furnishings to the church. In 1817 this austere and neoclassic temple, located between the local château and the village of Lourmarin, was inaugurated. Due to the quality of its architecture and the uniqueness of a Protestant heritage in Provence, this temple was placed on a supplementary list of Monuments historiques in 1991.

Recent heavy coverage of Pope Francis in America makes this next note of interest. In 2015 following a visit to a Waldensian Temple in Turin Italy, Pope Francis apologized for the Church's "un-Christian and even inhumane positions and actions" and asked Waldensian Christians for forgiveness for their persecution.

Santayana

I return to Santayana's quotation. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I listen carefully to what politicians, journalists, friends, preachers, blog respondents say. In Canada, too frequently, repetition of insults, abuses, and intolerances occur because the young have no knowledge of the past and older ones have forgotten or are reticent to remember it for the benefit of us all. And don't tell me religious intolerance tops the list. Secular intolerance of faiths and faith positions are equally offensive. Freedoms of thought, conscience and religion should still be of paramount importance to Canadians.