Pope John Paul II’s 1995 Evangelium Vitae encyclical emphasised the inherent value of human life and warned against a “culture of death”. Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP believes that Australia has embraced this culture. Source: Melbourne Catholic.
Archbishop Fisher’s critique was conveyed in the annual Nicholas Tonti-Filippini Oration, named for the late bioethicist who was a vocal opponent of voluntary euthanasia. The oration was part of the Catholic Medical Association of Australia’s two-day “Truth and Integrity in Medicine” conference.
Archbishop Fisher’s address, “Reflections on Evangelium Vitae and Australian culture 30 years on”, was presented in Melbourne on October 17, as the Victorian Parliament debates changes to its Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) laws that will make access easier.
When the Victorian Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 was passed, it was championed as the most conservative model in the world. The government promised a system with numerous “robust safeguards”.
Then-premier Daniel Andrews and then-health minister Jill Hennessy were emphatic that that the law would not compel any doctor or nurse to participate against their will.
But Archbishop Fisher argued that the slippery slope predicted by opponents is all too real.
“Criteria for VAD have proven loose and keep being loosened,” he said. “Suicide and euthanasia are being normalised as ways of dying and rights of conscientious objection are increasingly denied.”
Across Australia, VAD accounts for between 0.5 per cent and 1.6 per cent of all deaths. In contrast, Canada’s slightly older voluntary euthanasia policy, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), accounted for nearly 5 per cent of deaths in 2024.
One major difference between Canada’s laws and those in Australia is that Canadian doctors are allowed to raise the topic of assisted suicide with patients. That is not allowed in any Australian state, but the safeguard is about to be abolished in Victoria, if the Voluntary Assisted Dying Amendment Bill 2025 passes.
That, and other proposed changes, are not minor adjustments but a fundamental shift, Archbishop Fisher said.
This legislative expansion, according to the Archbishop, reflects a deeper, troubling change in Australia’s collective attitude toward life and suffering — a change foretold in Evangelium Vitae. The document spoke of a “conspiracy against life” where the sick and elderly are perceived as a burden.
“John Paul II’s diagnosis of a culture of death was not only an accurate description of his time, but prescient about ours,” Archbishop Fisher said.
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The prescience of Evangelium Vitae in today’s Australia (Melbourne Catholic)
