Chris Coghlan by Laurie Noble / UK Parliament (Left), Adobe Stock (Right)
Catholic United Kingdom Member of Parliament (MP) Chris Coghlan this weekend expressed outrage after his local priest reportedly announced to the parish that he would not give the MP Holy Eucharist because Coghlan recently voted in favor of legalizing assisted suicide.
Many on social media are praising the priest, saying his actions were consistent with Church teaching and coming from a place of charity and concern for Coghlan’s soul. The Catholic Church teaches that suicide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia are grave evils and prohibits support of them. The Church also holds that it is sacrilegious to receive the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin.
According to the BBC, Coghlan identified the priest as Father Ian Vane, who is pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Dorking. Coghlan is the Liberal Democrat MP for Dorking and Horley, and he told the outlet that he was not present in the church when the announcement was made, but several people contacted him expressing dismay at Fr. Vane’s alleged words.
On June 20, the UK Parliament’s House of Commons voted 314-291 in favor of legalizing assisted suicide in England and Wales. Four days before the vote, Fr. Vane had privately reached out via email to Coghlan about the matter, warning both about the grave evil of voting in favor of the bill and of how, if he did support it, he would be denied the Eucharist, according to a June 28 article Coghlan wrote in the Observer.
Fr. Vane allegedly warned that voting in favor of assisted suicide would make Coghlan “an obstinate public sinner” and that Coghlan would be complicit in a “murderous act, which must always been forbidden and excluded,” according to Coghlan. Fr. Vane also explained in the email that a pro-assisted suicide vote would mark “a clear contravention of the Church’s teaching, which would leave me in the position of not being able to give you holy communion, as to do so would cause scandal in the Church.”
In a June 30 article for PoliticsHome, Coghlan wrote that Fr. Vane’s email made “a clear threat to me before the vote” and that “the priest’s actions — intentionally or otherwise — were an attempt to coerce a Member of Parliament in their voting intention.”
In his article for the Observer, Coghlan also criticized Fr. Vane’s email for mischaracterizing “assisted dying” as euthanasia.
Coghlan described “assisted dying” as the practice “in which an individual has the choice to self-administer a drug to shorten their own inevitable and imminent death,” and claimed that Fr. Vane’s warning of complicitness falls short.
“It is very far from a ‘murderous act’, as he characterised it, but his reference to excommunication was clearly intended as a warning of the risk I was taking to my own salvation,” Coghlan wrote.
He stated that he voted in accordance with his conscience “and the overwhelming wishes of my constituents” and that Fr. Vane’s announcement followed two days later at Sunday Masses June 22.
In a June 29 X post, Coghlan decried Fr. Vane’s alleged announcement as “utterly disrespectful to my family and constituents including the congregation, and the democratic process. My private religion will continue to have zero direct relevance to my work as an MP representing all my constituents without fear or favour.”
The post went viral, and has been viewed 3.9 million times. Many of the post’s responses rallied around the priest’s actions, such as one response that read: “Your priest loves you.” Others called for Coghlan to repent.
In the PoliticsHome article, Coghlan shared that his vote was especially influenced in favor of the bill because of his mother, who died from ovarian cancer shortly after his birth. He posited that while he did not know if “assisted dying” — as the UK “End of Life” bill calls the practice — would have helped relieve his mother’s suffering or at least provided “peace of mind that there was a way out if it got too agonising,” he at least knew that he did not care about the priest’s opposition.
According to Coghlan’s article in the Observer, his children attend a Catholic state school. In his June 29 X post, Coghlan expressed dismay in his post that children who were friends with his children were in attendance at Mass when the priest made the announcement. Several commenters noted that Coghlan’s vote was public, too. Oxford ethicist and medical doctor Calum Miller commented that “your children’s friends could also see your public vote to abandon your faith and kill their grandparents, which is FAR more embarrassing, trust me.”
The BBC reports that Fr. Vane’s Diocese of Arundel and Brighton said in a statement that the assisted suicide voting issue “was a complex one for all involved” and acknowledged “the difficult task faced by MPs in seeking to represent their constituents.” It also said Arundel and Brighton’s Bishop Richard Moth encouraged clergy to write MPs privately about their concerns with the assisted suicide bill and to urge MPs to vote against it.
The diocese also stated, “The Catholic Church believes in the sanctity of life and the dignity of every person.”