Vatican City - Pope Benedict XVI on Monday launched a new condemnation on euthanasia, or medically assisted killings, describing the practice as a product of a materialistic and "utilitarian view of people"The pontiff made the remarks during a meeting with participants of an international congress at the Vatican entitled "Close by the Incurable Sick Person and the Dying: Scientific and Ethical Aspects".
"Death concludes the experience of earthly life, but through death there opens for each of us, beyond time, the full and definitive life," Benedict said.
"For the community of believers, this encounter between the dying person and the Source of Life and Love represents a gift that has a universal value, that enriches the communion of the faithful."
Stressing that "it is not science that redeems man", the pontiff said medical doctors "are duty-bound to express the solidarity of love, and to safeguard and respect human life in every moment of its earthly development, especially when it is ill or in its terminal stages".
The pontiff, invoking what he called "therapeutic proportionality", also gave a Roman Catholic definition of what forms of treatment should be acceptable for patients to receive and doctors to administer.
"In more concrete terms this means ensuring that every person in need finds the necessary support through appropriate treatments and medical procedures... while bearing in mind the moral duty to administer (on the part of doctors) and to accept (on the part of patients) those means for preserving life which, in a particular situation, may be considered as 'ordinary'."
As for forms of treatment "with significant levels of risk or that may reasonably be judged to be 'extraordinary', recourse thereto may be considered as morally acceptable, but optional," Benedict said.
Situations such as the increasing number of sick and elderly people left alone in cities were increasing pressures towards euthanasia, "especially when a utilitarian view of people has become established", the pontiff said.
He then recalled "the firm and constant ethical condemnation of all forms of direct euthanasia, in keeping with the centuries-long teaching of the Church".
Benedict said the need to respect life from its beginning to it natural end was such that as in the case of parents taking maternity or paternity leave to care for their infant children, relatives of those ill should also be allowed time off work to look after their loved ones.
