Unholy alliance in Rome

Italy's courts decided recently that Eluana Englaro may be allowed to die after spending almost 17 years in a vegetative state. However Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Pope Benedict XVI refused to accept the ruling, earning the criticism of the left-leaning daily die tageszeitung: "Even on matters far removed from ethics, Berlusconi has always demonstrated that in his view laws are there for one thing only: to be 'adapted'. ... Now he is furthering this goal more or less in the service of the Catholic Church. The Church can be happy to have such a willing advocate in Italy's government, one who does not hesitate to declare the Vatican's 'natural law' - the opposition to any form of assisted suicide - the sole standard. In this way the two men are letting the Englaro family feel the full weight of their authority. ... All of this has less to do with an ethical debate on euthanasia than with a church's pre-democratic claim to absolutism and its henchman, the state. This Roman alliance could not be more unholy."

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