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The economic crisis leads many to an emotional crisis, for some the last resort is suicide. Assume a higher suicide rate?
The church is made up of people who know they are called to come together. “Ekklesia” means: Those of us who have experienced God’s call want to form community. Every church, even the catacombs, is built to facilitate communion. Hermit existence, loneliness is for mystically gifted spiritual teachers, but not for us normal people. It is a great source of danger for people in times of pandemic to become psychologically dehydrated, depressed and withdraw from their sources of life. There is still much to come.
If we as a society know, why don’t we act now?
In many cases, I only see the need when I have photos. We know that many times it is the images that the media bring us that shake us. But also the homeless people who sleep on Stephansplatz challenge and overwhelm me. I can only wait and say: I hope we don’t overlook anyone. Without the elderly, without a home, without financial suffering, without the unemployed. Y: We also have to deal with the horrible misery, not just with children’s eyes.
You mean the underage refugees in Moria?
I cannot assess the political consequences, I leave it to the politicians. The news that 47 refugees, locked in a van, were discovered on a road in Lower Austria worried me at least as much. It is about the immediate and concrete need at one’s door, and the question is what would Jesus do now in my place.
Another change of subject at the end. The VfGH fall session is currently being held, which also addresses the possibility of euthanasia. Why is the Church so strictly against it? I agree with Cardinal König: “Everyone has the right to die at the hands of one person and not at the hands of another.” The only certainty I have as a person is the certainty that I will die. I am afraid of a society that says, “I invest in euthanasia instead of the hospice movement.” To make euthanasia possible, that would break the dam and send a very bad signal to older people who believe they are just a burden to their relatives. We are strangely ambivalent on this issue. We have to save all lives against Covid-19, whatever the cost, and at the very end of life there are those who say: Well, if he or she wants it for himself, then we leave it. I do not agree.
