The analogy between birth and death seems entirely inappropriate to the case Kung is trying to make. His birth, after all, was no more his responsibility than my birth was mine. That is not just basic Christian teaching; it is a really rather obvious fact of life.

Hans Kung is planning to take his life. Or so he said in an interview last week in the British Catholic weekly, The Tablet. Kung is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, macular degeneration, and polyarthritis in his hands. Determined not to go gentle into that good night, he has apparently decided that he will at some point travel to Switzerland in order to be assisted in committing suicide. His reasoning is threefold: he does not wish to live when there is no quality of life; his life is a gift from God and he intends to give it back to God; and death, like birth, is “our own responsibility.”

It is perhaps no surprise that someone who has spent a lifetime opposing the teaching of his own church on so many different issues (to the complete confusion of Protestants such as myself, I hasten to add) should choose to end his life in breaking one last church taboo. It is surprising, though, that his reasoning seems so weak.

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