10/01/2026
Nothing says "house of worship" like a lethal injection penciled in for 1 p.m.
In March 2022, Churchill Park United Church in Winnipeg, part of the United Church of Canada, pulled out the pews. In their place went a recliner, flowers, quilts and family photos for 86-year-old member Betty Sanguin.
Sanguin had ALS. She chose Canada's "medical assistance in dying," and church leaders voted unanimously to let it happen in the sanctuary.
They called it a "Crossing Over Ceremony." The injection began at 1 p.m. An hour later, she was dead.
Afterward, Rev. Dawn Rolke, minister of Churchill Park United Church, described the day to the Christian Post:
"We were deeply honored to be able to be with Betty in her final moments and hours and to honor her wishes around her dying process. She was so happy, she was so ready, she was so radiant."
Radiant. That's the word a pastor picked for a woman about to be put to death in front of the altar.
Canada calls it health care. Call it what it is: a doctor ending a life while a church holds the door.
This wasn't one rogue congregation, either. In 2017, the United Church of Canada officially declared it was "not opposed in principle" to assisted death.
Funny, I must have missed that chapter. Scripture says "the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." It doesn't say "the Lord gave, and the physician scheduled the rest."
Here's where it gets darker. Canada sold MAID as a last resort for the dying. Then in 2021 it dropped the requirement that death be "reasonably foreseeable."
In 2024 alone, 16,499 Canadians died by MAID. That's one in every 20 deaths in the country.
Next up? People whose only condition is mental illness become eligible on March 17, 2027, unless Parliament stops it.
Imagine battling bipolar disorder or crushing depression and finding out the system is ready to approve your death before it gets around to your treatment.
Don't worry, though. It's efficient. Canada's Parliamentary Budget Officer calculated that MAID cut health care costs by $86.9 million, with another $62 million in savings from expanding eligibility.
The office insisted nobody should read that as a reason to use it. Of course not.
A church's job is to sit with the suffering. It isn't supposed to rearrange the furniture for their exit.