Originally published at The Crux
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Following the recent intervention of Andy Burnham – the first professed Catholic to become Prime Minister in the UK – in the assisted suicide debate, the Catholic chaplain to the Houses of Parliament says he doesn’t believe that Burnham is opposed to assisted suicide in principle.
Last week, Burnham said of the assisted suicide bill that has been reintroduced to Parliament that the debate shouldn’t be happening until after “the fixing of the funding of palliative care and social care.”
“I think it is very challenging to introduce that wider debate in a context of people not receiving that care and having the peace of mind about that care,” he added.
Speaking to Crux Now, Father Christopher Colven, the chaplain to the UK’s parliament, said that he has been told that Burnham’s position on assisted suicide “is to be not opposed to the principle but to be against the current bill on pragmatic grounds.”
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The assisted suicide bill is virtually identical to the one that ran out of time last April while it was progressing through the Parliament’s House of Lords.
Colven went on to pour cold
