The Bishops' Conference of Scotland

16th March 2026

16 March 2026

MSPs face a binary choice on assisted dying: a new autonomy for some or protecting thousands of vulnerable and fearful Scots

The Scottish Parliament stands at a moment of profound moral consequence. On Tuesday, MSPs will cast their final vote on the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill—legislation that would change healthcare forever by permitting, for the first time, physician-assisted suicide.

This Bill is a serious threat to vulnerable Scots, including the elderly, disabled, those who suffer from poor mental health, and victims of domestic abuse. In a world that often prizes independence, those who are vulnerable can easily feel like a burden.

An amendment to the Bill that would have prevented doctors from being able to raise assisted suicide unprompted with patients, was rejected; a decision that, in one move, dismantles thousands of years of Hippocratic tradition of ‘first do no harm’.

This decision only adds to already significant concerns expressed by MSPs about the risk of coercion, demonstrating a keen awareness of their responsibility to protect vulnerable people from this threat.

The crucial conscientious objection clauses that offered protection to doctors have been stripped out of the Bill which means MSPs will be asked to vote on an incomplete Bill devoid of a key protection for healthcare workers. This has moved the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Scotland to switch from a position of neutrality to one of opposition to the Bill.

Furthermore, an institutional opt-out was disappointingly voted down by MSPs, meaning Catholic hospices and care homes would be forced to close rather than provide assisted suicides in a hammer blow to an already creaking palliative care system.

True compassion is not found in killing but in walking with those who suffer, ensuring they receive the medical, emotional, and spiritual care that affirms their inherent worth. Every person—regardless of age, illness, disability, or circumstance—is a gift from God. There is no such thing as a life without value. Our task as a society is not to eliminate suffering by eliminating the sufferer, but to surround every individual with love, support, and dignity until their natural end.

I understand how the choice before our MSPs is unenviable, because it is now a binary one; either they vote to allow some citizens a new autonomy, or they vote to protect thousands of vulnerable and fearful Scots who do not want this legislation and who will suffer most if this Bill passes. They cannot do both at the same time, and I would urge them, in the last analysis, to think of those who, in the months and years ahead, will find themselves defenceless and who, at this moment, are depending on them most.

Bishop John Keenan

President of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland

Contact:

Media Office

Bishops’ Conference of Scotland
64 Aitken Street, ML6 6LT
Tel: 01236 764061
Email: [email protected]

2nd March 2026

2 March 2026

Christian Leaders Urge MSPs to Reject Assisted Suicide Bill Ahead of Final Vote

An Open Letter to MSPs Ahead of the Stage 3 Vote on the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill

Dear Member of the Scottish Parliament,

We write together as Christian leaders in Scotland because we believe Liam McArthur's Assisted Dying bill touches one of the most important moral questions of our time - how we care for one another at the end of life.

While we understand the deeply felt desire to relieve suffering, permitting doctors to assist in ending life undermines human dignity. However carefully framed, such legislation risks normalising he idea that some lives are no longer worth living. It would expose the most vulnerable - the elderly, the disabled, and those who feel themselves to be a burden - to subtle pressures and coercion that no safeguard can fully prevent.

True compassion does not mean helping someone to die, but committing ourselves to care for them in life. Scotland should invest in first-class palliative and end-of-life care, ensuring that no one faces pain, fear, or loneliness without support.

Courts and legislatures in Canada and Australia have grappled with the consequences of assisted dying laws: eligibility has expanded, safeguards have been challenged, and concerns about coercion and misuse have arisen. We should learn from those experiences rather than repeat their mistakes.

We urge you, therefore, to stand for the equal worth and dignity of every human life, and to vote against this legislation at Stage 3. A truly compassionate society accompanies those who suffer; it does not abandon them to an early death.

Yours sincerely,

Rt Rev. Rosemary Frew
Moderator, Church of Scotland

Bishop John Keenan
President of the Bishops' Conference of Scotland

Rev Alasdair Macleod
Moderator, Free Church of Scotland

Rev Martin Keane, Moderator
United Free Church of Scotland

Major David Burns
Executive Secretary to Leadership (Scotland), Salvation Army

Andy Hunter
Director for Scotland, Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches

Alistair Matheson
Scottish Regional Superintendent for the Apostolic Church UK

Contact:

Media Office

Bishops’ Conference of Scotland
64 Aitken Street, ML6 6LT
Tel: 01236 764061
Email: [email protected]

27th February 2026

27 February 2026

Choosing Compassion, Not Assisted Suicide - A Pastoral Letter from the Catholic Bishops of Scotland

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Scotland stands at a moment of profound moral consequence. In the coming weeks, the Scottish Parliament will cast its final vote on the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill; legislation that would, for the first time in our nation’s history, permit physician-assisted suicide. As your shepherds, entrusted with the care of souls and the protection of human dignity, we write to you with deep concern.

True compassion is not found in hastening death but in walking with those who suffer, ensuring they receive the medical, emotional, and spiritual care that affirms their inherent worth. Every person—regardless of age, illness, disability, or circumstance—is a gift from God. There is no such thing as a life without value. Our task as a society is not to eliminate suffering by eliminating the sufferer, but to surround every individual with love, support, and dignity until their natural end.

Over recent months, several Members of the Scottish Parliament who once supported the proposal have now either withdrawn, or are seriously considering withdrawing, their backing, recognising that the risks embedded within it are too grave to ignore. Their change of heart reflects a dawning awareness that coercion, especially the subtle, hidden coercion experienced by the most vulnerable, including the elderly, the sick, the disabled and those living with domestic abuse, cannot be reliably detected, let alone prevented.

Key protections that should form the very foundation of such legislation, however flawed the principle may be, have been removed or rejected. Proposals for mandatory training for doctors to recognise coercive control were voted down by the Parliament Health and Social Care Committee. Measures ensuring that patients are offered proper palliative and social care before considering assisted suicide were dismissed. An opt-out for hospices and care homes who object to assisted suicide was also rejected. Even the conscience rights of healthcare workers remain uncertain. As a result, MSPs are being asked to vote on a Bill that is incomplete and reliant on future intervention from Westminster—an arrangement that several parliamentarians have already described as unworkable and irresponsible.

Experience from abroad also offers a sober warning. In countries where assisted suicide has been introduced, narrow criteria have widened over time, placing ever more people at risk—not because of unbearable physical suffering, but because they feel abandoned, isolated, or burdensome. We must not allow such a trajectory to take root here in Scotland.

We therefore urge you, the Catholic faithful of Scotland, to act. Please contact your MSPs and respectfully ask them to oppose this legislation. Make your voice heard in defence of those who may not be able to speak for themselves. Resources to assist you—including Care Not Killing’s online email tool—are available and we invite you to use them prayerfully and thoughtfully.

Let us also hold in prayer all those approaching the end of life, all who care for them, and all charged with shaping the laws of our land. May the Holy Spirit grant our nation the wisdom to choose the path of life, compassion, and genuine human solidarity.

Yours devotedly in Christ,
+ John Keenan, President, Bishop of Paisley
+ Brian McGee, Vice-President, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles
+ Andrew McKenzie, Episcopal Secretary, Bishop of Dunkeld
+ Leo Cushley, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh
+ William Nolan, Archbishop of Glasgow
+ Joseph Toal, Bishop of Motherwell
+ Hugh Gilbert, Bishop of Aberdeen
+ Francis Dougan, Bishop of Galloway

Contact:
Media Office

Bishops’ Conference of Scotland
64 Aitken Street, ML6 6LT
Tel: 01236 764061
Email: [email protected]

The Roman Catholic Bishops in Scotland work together to undertake nationwide initiatives through their Commissions and Agencies.

The members of the Bishops' Conference are the Bishops of the eight Scottish Dioceses. Where appropriate the Bishops Emeriti (retired) provide a much welcomed contribution to the work of the conference. The Bishops' Conference of Scotland is a permanently constituted assembly which meets regularly throughout the year to address relevant business matters.

Members of The Bishops' Conference of Scotland

Empty
Click + to add content

News from the Commissions and Agencies

Archive by tag: Bishops' Conference of ScotlandReturn

March 2026

09Mar

Gospel

09 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | BCoS Facebook |

Gospel
Luke 4:24-30
Jesus, like Elijah and Elisha, is not sent only to the Jews.

When Jesus came to Nazareth, he said to the people in the synagogue: ‘Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his home town. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.’ When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up, and drove him out of the town, and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.

08Mar

Bishop Toal Sunday Reflection 8 March 2026

08 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | BCoS Facebook |

Bishop Toal Sunday Reflection 8 March 2026

08Mar

Gospel

08 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | BCoS Facebook |

Gospel
John 4:5-42
‘A spring of water welling up to eternal life.’

At that time: Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?’ (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.’
Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come here.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming — he who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am he.’
Just then his disciples came back. They marvelled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you seek?’ or, ‘Why are you talking with her?’ So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’ They went out of the town and were coming to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, ‘Rabbi, eat.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Has anyone brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, “There are yet four months, then comes the harvest”? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.’

07Mar

Former MP Dennis Canavan shares his deeply personal story of losing his children and why this experience has strengthened his op...

07 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | Being Catholic |

Former MP Dennis Canavan shares his deeply personal story of losing his children and why this experience has strengthened his opposition to the Assisted Dying Bill.

In this powerful and emotional interview, Dennis speaks about the value of life, the importance of compassion, and the dangers posed by the Bill.

Watch his story and join the conversation. Make your voice heard by contacting your MSP through https://carenotkilling.scot/

The more we know, the more we say no!

07Mar

Wherever assisted suicide has been legalised for a number of years, the same pattern tends to emerge

07 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | BCoS Facebook |

Wherever assisted suicide has been legalised for a number of years, the same pattern tends to emerge. What begins as a law presented as tightly limited gradually expands over time.

Eligibility criteria change, new groups are included, and what was once described as a rare exception becomes a more common part of the system.

This is why it is so important to look carefully at the long term consequences of introducing such laws.

📩 Contact your MSP today and ask them to reject this Bill: carenotkilling.scot

07Mar

Photos from Bishops' Conference of Scotland's post

07 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | BCoS Facebook |

As Scotland approaches a decisive vote on the Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, important questions are being raised about the impact this legislation could have on vulnerable people, healthcare and the value our society places on every human life.

Anthony Horan, Director of the Catholic Parliamentary Office, sets out these concerns in an opinion piece titled “Why MSPs Must Reject Assisted Suicide".

Read the key points in the slides below.

07Mar

Gospel

07 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | BCoS Facebook |

Gospel
Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
‘Your brother was dead, and is alive.’

At that time: The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them.’
So he told them this parable: ‘There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.” And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.
‘But when he came to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.’ ”
‘And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” And they began to celebrate.
‘Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said to him, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.” But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” And he said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” ’

06Mar

Scotland is being asked to consider a Bill that would introduce assisted suicide into our law

06 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | BCoS Facebook |

Scotland is being asked to consider a Bill that would introduce assisted suicide into our law. Many people believe it is only about helping a very small number of people at the very end of life.

But the legislation goes much further than that. Under the proposals, any adult with an advanced and progressive illness or condition from which they cannot recover could be eligible. That could apply to far more people than many realise.

There are also serious concerns about the impact on healthcare. The proposals would allow doctors to raise the possibility of assisted suicide even when a patient has not asked about it, raising questions about the trust at the heart of the doctor–patient relationship.

At the same time, palliative care in Scotland remains underfunded and difficult to access for many people who need it. Surely our priority should be improving care and support for those facing serious illness.

Every human life has dignity and worth, especially those who are most vulnerable.

📩 Ask your MSP to reject this Bill: carenotkilling.scot

06Mar

Once the law changes, the debate does not end

06 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | Being Catholic |

Once the law changes, the debate does not end.

There will always be another group of people who are suffering but do not meet the criteria. And once assisted suicide is legal for some, pressure quickly grows to extend it to others.

This is why, in country after country, the scope of these laws continues to expand over time.

Before Scotland takes this step, it is vital to ask not only what the law says today, but where it may lead tomorrow.

📩 Contact your MSP today through carenotkilling.scot and make your voice heard.

06Mar

Gospel

06 Mar, 2026 | Bishops' Conference of Scotland | BCoS Facebook |

Gospel
Matthew 21:33-43, 45-46
‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him.’

At that time: Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people, ‘Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence round it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than at first. And they did the same to them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.” And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’
They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.’
Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the Scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes”? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.’
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because they held him to be a prophet.