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S i d e b a r
From Bishop Von Galen’s Sermon against Euthanasia
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This Rock
Volume 19, Number 2
 February 2008 
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"Thou shalt not kill." God engraved this commandment on the souls of men long before any penal code laid down punishment for murder, long before any court prosecuted and avenged homicide. Cain, who killed his brother Abel, was a murderer long before courts or states came into existence, and plagued by his conscience he confessed, "Guilt like mine is too great to find forgiveness . . . and I shall wander over the earth, a fugitive; anyone I meet will slay me." Because of his love for us God has engraved these commandments in our hearts and has made them manifest to us. They express the need of our nature created by God. They are the unchangeable and fundamental truths of our social life grounded on reason, well pleasing to God, healthful and sacred. God, our Father, wishes by these precepts to gather us, his children, about him as a hen shelters her brood under her wings. If we are obedient to his commands, then we are protected and preserved against the destruction with which we are menaced, just as the chicks beneath the wings of the mother. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often have I been ready to gather thy children together, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings; and thou didst refuse it!" Does history again repeat itself here in Germany, in our land of Westphalia, in our city of Munster? Where in Germany and where, here, is obedience to the precepts of God? The eighth commandment requires "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." How often do we see this commandment publicly and shamelessly broken? In the seventh commandment we read, "Thou shalt not steal." But who can say that property is safe when our brethren, monks and nuns, are forcibly and violently despoiled of their convents, and who now protects property if it is illegally sequestered and not given back? . . . The first three commandments have long counted for nothing in the public life of Germany and here also in Munster . . . The Sabbath is desecrated; holy days of obligation are secularized and no longer observed in the service of God. His name is made fun of, dishonored, and all too frequently blasphemed. As for the first commandment, "Thou shalt not have strange gods before me," instead of the One, True, Eternal God, men have created at the dictates of their whim, their own gods to adore: Nature, the State, the Nation, or the Race. In the words of St. Paul, for many their god is their belly, their ease, to which all is sacrificed down to conscience and honor for the gratification of the carnal senses, for wealth and ambition. Then we are not surprised that they should claim divine privileges and seek to make themselves overlords of life and death.
—Delivered August 3, 1941 at the Church of St. Lambert in Munster
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