Catholic Weekly condemned for invoking Holocaust in euthanasia debate

The Catholic Weekly has denounced Dominic Perrottet over assisted dying laws in NSW and compared voluntary euthanasia to the Holocaust, sparking a rebuke from Jewish community leaders.

The Catholic Weekly panned Dominic Perrottet for lacking ‘sufficient calibre’ to oppose VAD laws. Picture: Gaye Gerard

The Catholic Weekly newspaper has denounced Premier Dominic Perrottet over assisted dying laws in NSW and compared voluntary euthanasia to the Holocaust, sparking a rebuke from Jewish community leaders.

In an editorial headlined “Drop dead disgraceful”, the Catholic Weekly – published by the Archdiocese of Sydney – condemned Mr Perrottet for lacking “sufficient calibre” to oppose the VAD laws, which passed into law this month.

“Those left wondering whether the Catholic Premier had taken leave of his senses watched in amazement as he said he was ‘proud’ that the NSW parliament had presided over a respectful, tolerant and sensitive debate,” the Catholic Weekly editorial said.

“No one could call a debate over the consignment of ethnic groups to the concentration camps and which ended in that outcome a ‘unifying’ experience.”

Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich criticised the comments, saying “the comparison in the editorial to Nazi Germany and the death camps is insensitive, outrageous, and has no place in this debate”.

“It is a terrible distortion of history to compare Hitler’s barbaric ‘euthanasia’ killing operations and the hideous perversion of science and ethics as represented by the conduct of Nazi physicians to the passing of the voluntary assisted dying bill, which legalises euthanasia under certain conditions,” Dr Abramovich said.

NSW Labor leader Chris Minns. Picture: Toby Zerna

Mr Perrottet, a practising Catholic, voted against the laws but allowed members of his party a conscience vote on the issue.

Dr Abramovich said “this egregious analogy is just the latest example of a worrying epidemic of routine comparisons to Nazi Germany and Hitler that are occurring with alarming frequency”.

“We urge the magazine to remove this remark from the editorial, apologise, and refrain from employing such analogies in the future,” he said.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry Co-CEO Peter Wertheim said: “Whilst the Nazis did indeed murder several hundred thousand people with disabilities through their infamous ‘euthanasia program’, there was nothing remotely voluntary about it on the part of the victims or their families.

“The same is true of the Nazis’ industrial-scale genocide of the Jewish, Roma and Sinti peoples.

“To make any kind of comparison of these mass atrocities to the recently passed voluntary assisted dying legislation in NSW is fatuous, whether or not one agrees with the legislation or with statements made by members of parliament.

“Such comparisons also insult the memory of the millions of innocent people who perished at the hands of the Nazis and are callously insensitive to the ongoing trauma of the survivors.”

A spokesperson for the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney said Archbishop Anthony Fisher was not aware of the editorial but “to quote two words out of a 1400-word editorial is an egregious misrepresentation of the context of the piece”.

The Catholic Weekly editorial also attacked Opposition leader Chris Minns, who is Catholic, for devoting only five minutes to a speech opposing euthanasia.

“Five brief minutes was the most the Leader of the Opposition could find to argue that healthcare organisations – including Catholic hospitals – should not be forced by law and against their most fundamental ethical principles to collaborate in killing,” the Weekly said.

The Weekly said evil had triumphed because “the two individuals with the most political capital and authority to bring to bear in opposing such a victory looked very much as if they lost their nerve and didn’t have the stomach for the fight”.

“The performance was bizarre and surreal, constituting one of the most humiliating examples of meek acceptance of evil ever seen” the Catholic Weekly editorial said.

“Those who stood for life are fully entitled to ask where Dominic Perrottet and Chris Minns were in the lobbying, the campaign to communicate the reality of euthanasia, the parliamentary cut and thrust necessary to opposing it?”

The Weekly contrasted this was the “heroic resistance” of MLC Greg Donnelly “as he valiantly attempted to at least ameliorate by amendment some of the most obscene measures of the Greenwich bill”.

The Premier’s office has been contacted for comment.