Faye Girsh, the executive director of the Hemlock Society, attacked Catholicism in a letter to American Medical News, the official newspaper of the American Medical Association.
Girsh wrote that while it was okay for Cardinal Bernardin to oppose doctor assisted suicide, it was not okay for the late cardinal “to foist the church’s views on others.” She also trotted out the old canards about Galileo and Darwin.
The league responded with a letter that charged Girsh with wanting to censor the Catholic Church. “She knows all too well,” wrote William Donohue, “that Cardinal Bernardin had every constitutional and moral right to speak to this issue, and she also knows the difference between a church that proposes its ideas to society and one that imposes them. That the Catholic Church has neither the interest nor the ability to `foist’ its views on the public should be axiomatic, save for those bent on silencing the church.”
Girsh also chastised the AMA for associating with the “authoritarian” views of the Catholic Church (she was referring to the Church’s opposition to abortion). Donohue wrote that “Terms like `authoritarian’ are bandied about by those who suffer from intellectual collapse.” He added that “Those who can speak logically to public policy issues never engage in such discourse because they know how unproductive it is.”
It is amazing that those who show an enthusiasm for wanting doctors to kill their patients often cannot resist the opportunity to use invective. Nor can they resist the temptation to bash the Catholic Church.
