ABSTRACT
The role and meaning of death have been the focus of the Catholic critique of physician-assisted suicide; it is not suicide itself that is the focal point of the present policy debate. This chapter explains the Catholic understanding of life as a gift from God, something over which people has stewardship, not dominion. In the words of the Vatican Declaration on Euthanasia, "One cannot impose on anyone the obligation to have recourse to a technique which is not the equivalent of suicide on the contrary, it should be considered as an acceptance of the human condition, or a wish to avoid the application of medical procedure disproportionate to the results that can be expected". The theological understanding of death as a part of the Divine Plan is the basis of the distinctions made in the Catholic moral theology between "killing and letting die"; "active and passive euthanasia"; "omission and commission"; "foreseeing and intending"; "allowing and causing".
