Regarding the letter 'Catholic dogma limits freedom of speech', by Maurice Fitzgerald, 16 May, 2007: Our present culture tends to consider suffering the epitome of evil. In such a culture, there is a great temptation to resolve the problem of suffering by eliminating it at the root, by hastening death so that it occurs at the moment considered most suitable. Intentionally causing one's own death, suicide, is murder because it is a rejection of God's sovereignty and loving plan. It is a refusal of love for self, the denial of a natural instinct to live, a flight from the duties of justice and charity owed to one's neighbour, to various communities or to the whole of society.

The pleas of gravely ill people who sometimes ask for death are not to be understood as implying a true desire for euthanasia; in fact, it is almost always a case of an anguished plea for help and love. Contrary to Fitzgerald, true compassion leads to sharing another's pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear. Unfortunately, there exists in contemporary culture a certain Promethean attitude which leads people to think that they can control life and death by taking the decisions about them into their own hands. What really happens in this case is that the individual is overcome and crushed by a death deprived of any prospect of meaning or hope.

Euthanasia is senseless and inhumane and should be opposed in all its forms.

Paul Kokoski ,

Columbia Drive,

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.