Martin Scicluna’s article ‘Last human right’ (August 10) is based on the assumption that we are the sole arbitrators of our lives.

As a Christian, one cannot leave out the most important factor on which one’s life is based.  I, for one, categorically assert that a person’s life belongs neither to the individual nor to the doctor assisting the individual but to God, the sole author of one’s life.

How unfair and unjust are Scicluna’s comments when he insists that “traditional religious beliefs should play no part in the debate” when these beliefs are the inspiration and basis of one’s life.  No wonder that in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae it is being affirmed that “when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life”.

Because “human life belongs only to God” as the same encyclical asserts, it is through our total submission to His will, even when we pass through unbearable suffering, that we attain our fullness and perfection.

Scicluna contends that “helping the terminally ill to die peacefully at a time of their own choosing... represents the Christian values of charity, compassion, mercy, dignity and kindness”.  The doctrine of the Church states that “even when not motivated by a selfish refusal to be burdened with the life of someone who is suffering, euthanasia must be called a false mercy and indeed a disturbing ‘perversion’ of mercy.  True ‘compassion’ leads to sharing another’s pain, it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear” (Evangelium Vitae).

We cannot, in any way, when discussing issues related to the core of the human person, abandon our beliefs.  Our beliefs are not based simply on emotions and feelings but on deep intellectual assertions in the one true God and His teachings.