Assisted dying: CEF prepares its appeals, the State is already speeding up protocols

Hardly adopted, the French law on end-of-life assistance is already seeing its implementation protocols being studied. As for the bishops of France, they are examining the remaining legal avenues.

The fact

On July 16, 2026, Vatican News reports the concern of the Conference of Bishops of France and their reflection on the legal avenues still open after the adoption of the law on end-of-life assistance. On the same day, Aleteia reveals that the administrative application protocols are already being studied at the Ministry of Health. France Catholique publishes a sober tribune: "The law is adopted, but hope remains." Infovaticana finally relays the denunciation, by the bishops, of a "serious point of rupture." The episcopal communiqué accompanies the referral to the Constitutional Council by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, under Article 61, paragraph 2 of the Constitution.

Our reading (in the light of the magisterium)

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that "direct euthanasia, whatever its motives and means, consists in putting an end to the life of handicapped, sick, or dying persons; it is morally unacceptable" (CCC 2277). John Paul II, in Evangelium Vitae of March 25, 1995, qualifies it as a "serious violation of the law of God" (n. 65). The bishops of France cannot directly seize the jurisdictions; they articulate with associations and parliamentarians. The legal battle is deployed on four fronts: decision of the Constitutional Council, administrative litigation on future decrees, priority questions of constitutionality, appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The collective conscience clause of denominational institutions remains an open file.

To ponder

A law is not the truth. The faithful Catholic cannot bend his conscience to an injunction contrary to natural law. The legal battle begins, the battle of conscience continues. It is first waged in hospitals and nursing homes, these places where the lives of the most vulnerable are at stake every day.