A Catholic Bishop in England has called on the faithful there to become actively involved in lobbying against assisted suicide.

Addressing English pilgrims to the French Marian shrine at Lourdes, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury called on Catholics to lobby their local political representatives ahead of the debate on assisted suicide legislation in Parliament this September.

Quoted in The Catholic Herald, Bishop Davies warned: “We may only have a matter of weeks to make our voices heard before Parliament decides whether a culture of care or a culture of suicide and eventually of killing prevails.”

Describing proposed legislation on suicide as “a law of despair”, Bishop Davies further warned that passage of the Assisted Dying Bill would represent “the first step on the road to euthanasia”.

“We can imagine the pressures under which some of the most vulnerable will come if assisted suicide becomes the mindset of British society,” he said. Bishop Davies words have been echoed by a spokesperson for the Church of England, Revd Dr Brendan McCarthy, the Church’s national adviser on medical ethics, who in a blog post commented that the Assisted Dying Bill “has the potential to damage both the well-being of individuals and the nature and shape of our society”.

“We must choose what sort of society we wish to become: one in which people are valued primarily for their utility or one in which every person is supported, protected and cherished even if, at times, they fail to cherish themselves.”