Black is beautiful

The New Theological Movement has posted on wearing black vestments for All Souls Day and funerals. It’s quite a long post; here’s a clip:

The meaning of black vestments

Black is, of course, a symbol of death (that is, in Western Civilization). Certainly, other colors have also been used to represent death – even green! Still, for the most part, black is the traditional symbol of death in Western culture, and this still holds today. In the Western world, everybody wears black to a funeral … except the priest, and he often wears white!

Black does not signify despair, not at all. Rather, black is the symbol of mourning, of loss, of death – but this mourning will be turned to joy, the loss is great gain, and death is birth unto true life. The color black is in no way contrary to Christian hope.

Black as a liturgical color

It is worth noting that – although, in the early days of the Church, white seems to have been the color of vestments on every day of the year – black was almost certainly introduced into the liturgy before violet (purple). In fact, it seems that black came to be used as one of the (originally) four principal colors of the Mass: White, green, red, and black.

Considering the antiquity of the color, it is somewhat surprising that black is used far less often today than is violet – while many Catholics have seen violet used (in Advent and Lent), nearly an whole generation has never seen a black vestment (at least in the USA).

Traditionally, black is used at all Masses of the dead and funeral Masses, on All Soul’s Day, and on Good Friday. In the Novus Ordo, black is not to be used on Good Friday, but may still be used at the other Masses (though violet and even white are also permitted, and in practice preferred). There is no reason why a priest could not, in the Novus Ordo begin to use black vestments at least for All Soul’s day – and even for funerals and Requiem Masses.

Read Full Post »

Some thoughts on suffering

Bad Catholic claims Christianity has the world’s only coherent response to suffering. Here is just a small taste – but please read the whole post.

Thus love and suffering cannot be divorced. Let any man who claims he can love without suffering be hung as a liar, for to truly desire the Good of another (to love) is to be willing to work to move the other from the bad to the good (to suffer). Whether that Good be their safety, security, happiness, peace or just their full stomach, love sweats bloodfor it. Love suffers.

Suffering then, is the logical nature of a God who is Love itself. If — as we established earlier — love and suffering are inseparable — then Infinite Love willingly experiences infinite suffering. Enter Christ.

I’ve more to say – responding to the ‘suffering is the ultimate evil’ meme that has popped up here a few times – but not right this minute. Next post, I hope.

Read Full Post »

A speculative description of Heaven and Hell

The letter writers in Taylor Caldwell’s book Dialogues with the Devil describe hell and heaven. First, Lucifer, on Hell:

The pious in Terra speak only of the agonies of hell, and they exist for they are pleasure.  Have they seen my glorious cities, bewitching, extravagant?  They are filled with the delights of Terra, but immeasurably enhanced.  Millions, newly arrived, look upon them with eagerness and smiles, and rush to inhabit them.  The lavish city in which I live is a city that lived in the hot imaginations of men, filled with every satisfaction of their vile hearts, every concupiscent lust of their flesh, every dream of their envious hearts.  There are glittering houses heaped with gleaming treasures, and ballrooms and arenas and theaters and stadia, and shops to make any merchant weep with greed, and towering castles of every perversion and streets of magnitude filled with music, and tables everywhere crowded with saucy viands and bottomless vessels of wine, and demons to be slavish lackeys.  There are vistas of heroic mountains like alabaster, and sparkling forests vibrating with song and valleys lush as velvet and rivers like gilt.  Here souls of the damned are free to come and go, to sport, to converse, to play, to partake of all my captivations.  They are free to argue their childish controversies, to engage in the pursuits that enthralled them on Terra, to discuss strange things with the inhabitants of worlds of which they never dreamed, to invent new theories and excited hypotheses, to “seduce” beautiful female demons.  There is not an alluring vice that is denied them, not a passion which is not immediately gratified.  Ah, I tell you, Michael, they often mistake hell for heaven at first!

But pleasure never changes in hell, never diminishes, can never aspire to greater diversions such as exalted meditation and reflection; never knows an end.  Nothing is withheld; there is no struggle; there are no heart-burnings, no room for ambition and achievement.  All is equal; all is accessible to every soul.   There is no applause, for no soul exceeds another in stature.  No face is different from any other face, nothing is unique or creative or deserving of acclaim.  No soul is worthy, for all are worthless.  Each is clad in the robes of doom — unchanging uniformity.  Where one soul cannot excel another in any fashion ennui results and a mysterious terror, for God created all souls to strive and excel and thus be free and develop priceless individuality.  But, it is my democracy.

At last, in despair and desperate boredom, my doomed pray for the less attractive portions of my sovereignty, where there is pain, and weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Grief, at the final hour, becomes more desirable than pleasure, for it has endless ramifications.  At the last I can engage these damned in my service — the seduction of souls yet living on Terra.  At least there is some excitement in this!  Envy and hatred and resentment are enlisted in my employ, for who of the damned can rejoice to see a soul escape him?  What rejoicings there are in hell when more of the corrupted fall into the pit!  If the Heavenly Hosts are joyous when a soul is saved, how much more are the damned joyous when a soul falls!  Do not ask me why.  Did I create man?  His perverted mind often makes me recoil with disgust.  You would say I perverted him.  No, I only tempt.

With what glee my damned introduce the newly doomed to my hells!  They look upon their dismayed faces and hug themselves with rapture.  They peer for tears, and drink them avidly.  They take the newly doomed by the hand and shout with happiness at the recoiling when horrors are confronted.  This is the only satisfaction in hell, and it is a satisfaction most deeply encouraged.

And then Michael on Heaven:

I look upon the constant striving in Heaven with pleasure and affection.  There is a perpetual coming and going of angels and the souls of the saved with news of new planets and universes and the wonders upon them.  There is endless laughter and excitement and exchange of opinion and conjecture.  Was it not the Christ who said that human ear has not heard and human eye has not seen the marvels which God has prepared for those who love Him?

Do I need to recall to you the aspect of Heaven?  Eternal noon, but not an unchanging noon.  No vista remains the same.  No vision of the eye is static.  The only constant is love between angel and man and God and angel and God and man.  All else changes, and always there is anticipation and work.  Work is not an affliction, as human hearts believe it is.  When God “condemned” man to work He bestowed the next holiest gift after free will.  Labor is prayer and achievement, and the uncertainty of the achievement.  Beauty is always in the process of becoming, but is never fully attained.  Joy is in the next turning, but the next turning promises greater joy.  Love is never completely satisfied in Heaven, except for the surety of the Love of God.  It strains forever, and happily, after greater fulfillments.

If a soul is weary after its sojourn on any of the worlds, it may rest in green shadows and peace until its weariness is spent.  Then it must engage in the work of God, which is never completed.  It so engages with eagerness and with a pleasure that is never satisfied.  Does a soul desire to create marvelous sunsets or dawns on any world?  It is given into its hands, for the greater glory of God.  The soul paints the skies with the calm and stately morning or the pensive quietude of evening.  It colors the flowers of the field and gives the grain its gold.  If it is concerned with wonders that baffled it in life, then it pursues the answer to the wonders and it becomes luminous with satisfaction when the answer is finally perceived.  But still other wonders beckon it on, and tantalize it.

Was a soul without the love of men on the worlds and did it languish for that love?  It is poured into its immortal hands in Heaven and is appeased.  Did it hope on the earths that it would see the faces of the lost beloved?  It so sees and knows that never again can there be parting or ennui with love, itself.  Did it long for children to embrace, when children were denied?  Its arms are rich with children in Heaven.  Was it homeless before its ascent?  It can create for itself the home of its lost dreams, whether humble or a palace.  Did it desire to serve God to the utmost while in flesh, yet could not fulfill that desire?  The fullfilment is its own, ranging the endless universes and inspiring the sorrowful and lifting up the hearts of the sad and soothing the pain of the innocent, and bringing good news to those who dwell in darkness.  It can whisper in the winds and bring knowledge in the twilights and hope in the dawns.  Each soul that it helps save and bring safely to God is an occasion for triumph, and its fellows triumph with it.

All of which a man innocently dreamed in flesh is his at home, whether simple or magnificent.  Best of all he grows in accomplishment.  Always, there is the divine discontent, and never the security of hell.  Always, angels and men must strive in Heaven.  There is not one congregation, for in congregations there is conformity and the soul cannot exist in sameness.  Each soul is an individual, and resembles no other, and serves as no other.  It serves its own need, and God is its need, and though it attains God it never fully envelops or knows Him.  There is its most splendid dissatisfaction, its happiness.  For what is completely possessed is a weariness.  Victory is nothing when victory is entirely attained.  You have seen the misery of conquerors on all the worlds, when there was nothing else to conquer.  But none conquers in heaven save God, and who knows if He fully conquers?

Above all, in Heaven, there is no exhaustion, no tiredness of spirit, no repletion.  There is eternal youth, and endless speculation.  You have said that love is passive.  If it is, then it is not love at all, but only selfish desire or a momentary engrossment.  It is peaceful, and that is true, but it is not the peace of death.  It is surety, but still it is not the surety of the grave.  It must eternally be sought and eternally found, with new aspects and new delights.  The music of Heaven is the voices of those who have seen a new face in love and marvel that they had not seen it before.

The City of God is not like unto your city, O Lucifer, for there is no gross pleasure in it, no obscene appetites.  All that was beautiful and beguiling and enchanting on the worlds is greatly magnified in heaven, and always changing, offering new enticements.  It is never the same, while it is always the same.  You will scornfully say again that that is a paradox, but there is infinite delight in paradoxes.  Only Absolutes are rigid, and rigidity is the true death of the spirit.  But one Absolute reigns in Heaven and the planets, and that is the Absolute of God’s love.  All else moves with the soul and is part of it.  One veil is lifted but to reveal another veil of an even more enthralling color.  Pursuit of the unattainable is the climate of Heaven.

There is no end of knowledge in Heaven, no end of learning.  The soul pursues new knowledge and learns forever.  It does not stand like a marble image confronting changelessness.  Its face is eternally lit with the fires and the colors of new universes and new aspirations and new adventures.  It clamors to know.  Yet, it can never know completely, and that is its reward.  God is like an earthly father who constantly places new riddles before his children, and smiles as they eagerly guess its secrets and learn its answers.  There are always new books to read, new wonders to excite the imagination, new vistas to explore.

When you were in Heaven you declared that this finally wearied you, for, you said, Heaven was like a ball of silk which was never fully unwound and there was no hope of the unwinding.  In short, you wished to make Heaven a hell, where there is absolute fulfilment, and there is nothing more to be attained.  A state of stasis is surely hell, as you have discovered to your sorrow.  You wished to sleep, you said, and you rested on your great white wings of light, but you did not sleep.  You wished to peer and understand that which is not understandable, even by archangels.  You desired the ultimate.  Alas, Lucifer, you have attained it.  Your city resounds with success.  Why, then, are you not content?

Dialogues with the Devil – for those who are not familiar with it – is a series of letters between Lucifer and the archangel Michael, discussing good and evil. Here’s how Caldwell describes it in the Foreword:

It began in a lighthearted mood — in order to give Lucifer his day in court — and then it stopped being lighthearted and became very somber and grim indeed, as Lucifer presented his case against mankind and the problem of Good and Evil, and its mystery . . .

In all traditions he fell from Heaven because of the sin of pride and disobedience and rebellion, and became the slave and master of men, tempting them to eternal death and perdition.  He has as many names as God [Luciel… Ahriman… Apap… Loki… Tiamet… Siva… Manyu… Beelzebub… Pluto], in dead and living religions, but, like God, his nature never changes, nor his objectives.

Read Full Post »

Infanticide in the realm of meaning

The current debate over an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics is a great example of the kind of collision between fact and meaning that Raimond Gaita discusses in The Philosopher’s Dog.

In the article, academics Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva suggest that, if it is permissible to kill an unborn child, then the same arguments justify killing one that has been born. Various commentators have pointed out that the argument is not new. Giubilini and Minerva have offered a new name for the practice –  ‘post-natal abortion’ – but not new arguments to justify it. The Irish Times asks for those who support abortion to challenge the logic of the post-natal abortion argument. On Mercator, Margaret Somerville points out that the arguments lead to a logical choice: we liberalise infanticide or tighten up on abortion. And, also on Mercator, Trevor Stammers makes a similar point with the term ‘antinatal infanticide’. Trevor warns that ideas have consequences.

Meanwhile, I’m pondering Gaita’s view that meaning co-exists with, and does not arise from, scientific knowledge.

…Linden and Masson [in a book about animal consciousness] are right to reject standards imposed on evidence that are not so much scientific as scientistic – that express a a quasi-superstitious belief that scientific knowledge is the prototype for all knowledge and that the method that achieves it should be the prototype for all rigourous enquiry.

Crass though it sometimes is, scientism is nonetheless a complex phenomenon. It rests on a variety of assumptions about what counts as objective knowledge and about when doubt can legitimately be put to rest. Some of these assumptions are relatively superficial and are little more than prejudices – that everything should be quantifiable or that in the absence of quantification there can be no real precision, for example. But some assumptions go deep and are deep. Linden and Masson share one of them with virtually everyone who studies animal behaviour – namely, that justification for the claims we make about ‘animal consciousness’ are a function of the kind of evidence we can bring to bear…

The second assumption [is] that factual knowledge is the prototype for all knowledge…

Later, he says:

Much of our understanding of human and animal behaviour cannot without serious distortion be abstracted from the realm of meaning into the realm of factual/scientific inquiry… understanding in the realm of meaning often proceeds by moving to more particular and discriminating descriptions than to more general ones as happens in the natural sciences.

Giubilini and Minerva rest their case on two points: on what we know about the cognitive capacity of a newborn infant, and on the meanings we ascribe (to ‘person’, to ‘rights’, to various life stages, to social cohesion, and so on).  The first of these falls largely into the realm of factual/scientific inquiry. The second belongs to the realm of meaning. The Irish Times and Mercator accept the basic argument that a newborn infant does not differ in any way from that same infant just before it entered the birth canal. Where they differ from the academics is in what this logical reality means.

Read Full Post »

Home for the hol’s

I’ve been taking a bit of annual leave recently – to sit around hospitals and more recently to help my mother pack up all her belongings ready to move to a flat closer to my sister.  Someone at work asked me how I enjoyed my holiday. Well, for a given meaning of the word ‘holiday’, I suppose it was (and is – I’m immersed in the packing this week). It isn’t my idea of a holiday – but then some people do marathons in their holiday. Some camp in primitive tents on lakeshores. Some run the bulls in Pamplona. Some give their time to build houses in storm, earthquake, or flood-torn third world countries. Some ride horses over the mountains from Middlemore to Cromwell. A holiday is, I guess, what works for you.

All this is by way of introducing a post by Bad Catholic. I was going to yield to Toad’s request for a post on Heaven, and begin my post with a quote from Lewis’s Last Battle. But Bad Catholic did it first and better, and even quoted from the Last Battle – although not the quote I had in mind. I was thinking of Aslan’s welcome to Heaven: “The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

Without further ado, I invite you to join Marc as he explains: “Why Modern Man Wouldn’t Like Heaven (If He Had the Balls to Get There)”

Read Full Post »

“If this is how you treat your friends, I’m not surprised you have so few.”

For All Saints Day, it seems appropriate to chip in on the exchange a few days ago about the story of Lazarus and other incidents in the Gospels. Jerry described them as awful stories. Chris was soothing, suggesting that literal interpretations are not edifying. In the case of Lazarus, Chris assured us that it was a resuscitation, not a resurrection.

It seems to me that one very clear lesson stands out from 4000 years of stories about relationships between our God and those God calls His own. Being God’s friend is tough. Not just because of the way others treat you when you put God first – though almost every prophet, almost every saint, has been scorned and persecuted at some time and in some way. But also because of the extras that God loads on those closest to Him. Physical illness. Lost opportunities. Rejection. Separation from the certainty of his presence. A call to serve where they least want to go.

A good God, we are told (by implication, at least), wouldn’t want us to suffer. I think that’s twaddle. Our good God wants us to spend eternity with God, and God’ll do whatever necessary to make that happen.

I have little patience for the idea that anything uncomfortable in Scripture must have been misinterpreted right up until the new filters applied by the clever clogs of the last fifty years. It is hard to see how John could have intended his Lazarus story to be read allegorically given the details he included: such as the corpse stinking.

And, while I get the tragedy of the whole story, I don’t agree with Jerry as to what the tragedy was. He suggests several ways in which the raising of Lazarus was horrible: that he was raised and others weren’t; that his family had been mourning him; that he now had to die again. To me, the greatest tragedy is that Lazarus was safely on the other side of death and he was dragged back. And Jesus thought it was a tragedy, too. He wept at the thought. And just over a week later, he was himself tortured and killed (which, when you think about it, might explain why the focus of the story didn’t stay with Lazarus). So he didn’t ask his friends to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself.

It seems to me Jerry wants a bob each way: On the one hand, if there is no God and no eternal life, then Lazarus wasn’t raised. On the other hand, if there is a God and is an eternal life, a few days here or there are pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. If death is the end, there is no story. If death is not the end, then the story isn’t awful (though it is certainly aweful).

Does God’s approach to God’s friends mean God is not good? I don’t think so. God has a different time scale and a different perspective. A child, sent to bed so that they can be fresh for a party coming up the next day, or deprived of cake because it contains an ingredient that will make them ill, may well accuse the parent of being ‘bad’. But the parent has a broader perspective. Even then; both parent and child are human. How can we timebound, finite, creatures judge the behaviour of the infinite creator? We accept quite freely that each species has its own standards by which it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. When we say God is ‘good’, we expect God’s moral values to be at least as ‘good’ as ours; but we’re daft if we think that means we’ll always understand them.

Being God’s friend is a tough job. St Teresa of Avila, one of my favourite saints, is reported to have shaken her fist at heaven and declaimed: “If this is how you treat your friends, I’m not surprised you have so few.” Nonetheless, she thought it was worth it. She also said:

Let nothing trouble you,
let nothing frighten you.
All things are passing;
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
He who possesses God lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.

St Paul says something similar:

As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Read Full Post »

The Feast of the Assumption

The Assumption (An Answer)

Before Earth saw Him, she had felt and known
The small soft feet that thrust like buds in Spring.
The body of Our Lord was all her own
Once. From the cross her arms received her King.

Think you that she, who bore Him on her breast,
Had not the Word still living in her heart?
Or that, because one voice had called her blest,
Her inmost soul had lost the better part?

Henceforth all generations……Ah, but that
You think was an ancient song she knew!
Millions this night will sing Magnificat,
And bring at least one strange prediction true.

Think you His heaven, that deep transcendent state,
Floats like Murillo’s picture in the air?
Or that her life, so heavenly consecrate,
Had no essential habitation there?

Think you He looked upon her dying face,
And, throned above His burning seraphim,
Felt no especial tenderness or grace
For her whose life-blood once had throbbed in Him?

Proof of his filial love, His body on earth
Still lives and breathes, and tells us, night and day,
That earth and heaven were mingled in His birth,
Through her, who kneels beside us when we pray;

Kneels to the Word made flesh; Her living faith
Kneels to Incarnate Love, “not lent but given,”
Assumed to her on earth; and, after death,
Assuming her to His own heart in Heaven.

Alfred Noyes.

Read Full Post »

Dying you destroyed our death; rising you restored our life

Easter commemorates the central event of Christianity: the death and resurrection of Jesus.

St Paul says that our beliefs about this are a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. Today, we could say a scandal to Islam and foolishness to the new atheists.

A few weeks ago, Mr Badger asked for a discussion on the crucifixion – or rather, on the reason or reasons Jesus was incarnated in order to be crucified. (By the way, this conversation will stall on the doorstep if you insist on debating the central premise that Jesus was the Son of God, and was incarnated in order to be crucified. Can we please save that argument for another day, and instead stick to discussing the pros and cons of the various explanations that have been proposed?)

I’ve suggested shaping the discussion around three explanatory memes: ransom, judicial, and narrative – and I’ve since thought of a fourth, sacrificial, and a fifth, evolutionary. There is support for all of these in the Bible, and in the writing of the early Fathers and the Doctors of the Church.

I can think of no particular reason why there needs to be only one explanation – though they may well be ranked according to whether they are necessary to the mechanics of salvation or necessary to the psychology of salvation. In my considered view, no explanation is completely true, and all have something to offer. Different explanations will appeal to different people and at different times.

In the end, the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection can’t be fully explained – to paraphrase KA, I am content to know there are some things I can’t yet understand. But it is interesting to speculate, and perhaps we may learn something from one another.

I propose to write a brief paragraph on each, then open the discussion to the floor. Then, maybe, in coming posts, I can add a bit here or there – from my own ramblings or from stuff I’ve found written by other people. I’m concerned I’ve summarised to the point of incoherence, but I hope you’ll bear with me and help me tease the ideas out in the comment box.

In the ransom and judicial models, I take it that the incarnation was a necessary prelude to his death. in the sacrificial, narrative and evolutionary models, the incarnation is part of the explanation. The resurrection is part of the explanation in all five models.

Ransom

The ransom explanation basically suggests that we have sold ourselves to the sins of our choice, and through them to Satan. Our sins give Satan the right to demand our death (and, according to some accounts, our souls). Christ’s death, being the death of the incarnate God, is sufficient to pay the fee for all human beings throughout time. By this explanation, I take it, we can accept or refuse to be ransomed. But the price has been paid, nonetheless.

The resurrection is a natural consequence of someone completely innocent willingly paying the ransom in full consciousness of what He was doing – Jesus couldn’t stay dead because He had not bartered Himself away to Satan.

CS Lewis had a particular affection for this explanation, using it in his Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe story, and in the sf series that began with Out of the Silent Planet.

I’ve also come across a variant, the down payment explanation – the suggestion that Jesus paid our first instalment, making it possible for us to stay out of spiritual debt long enough to build up some credit ready for the final reckoning.

Judicial

The judicial explanation is one of St Paul’s favourites. We have done things we ought not to have done, and left undone things that we ought to have done. These failures of will – these acts of selfishness and pride – make us unable to approach God. We will be judged, and we will be found guilty because we are guilty. Christ’s death – the acceptable penalty for our crimes – won for us a pardon, if we wish to accept it.

Thus, when Satan – the prosecuting lawyer – outlines all the reasons we have earned our banishment from Heaven, saying ‘guilty’, Jesus – our Judge – will respond ‘pardoned’.

The resurrection is a sign that we are forgiven, a promise of things to come – our sins stay dead, but after the judgement, we rise again.

Sacrificial

The sacrificial explanation has deep roots. The idea that God or the gods can claim our first fruits is an old one in most cultures. The idea that the King dies for the people in order to bring new life haunts our Indo-European mythic history.

In some ways, then, the sacrificial model is a non-Christian explanation for the power of the Easter story. Nevertheless, it is an explanation that was used from the very earliest days. Jesus was recognised as the High Priest who offered the Sacrifice and also as the Sacrificial Lamb. By this explanation, Jesus was the sin offering required in the law to remit all penalties and cleanse the giver. Our acceptance of this offering makes the offering apply to us.

The incarnation – giving up Heaven to become human – was part of the sacrifice. The resurrection is a sign that the sacrifice is acceptable, and that we too shall be raised.

Narrative

The narrative explanation holds that God tells us stories through the lives of those who serve Him, and Jesus is the greatest story He has ever told. This one rings very true to me; we chattering hominids learn best through stories and example, and it is in our shared stories that we find and reinforce community.

From His incarnation, through His life, death and resurrection, to His ascension and Pentecost, the Christ story tells us ‘God loves you’, ‘God shares your pain’, ‘God thinks you matter enough to die for’, ‘Death is not the end and it will be worth it’. Other messages are there too: everyone is worthy of respect, everyone deserves another chance, love one another, forgive those who hurt you, don’t give up.

The incarnation and the resurrection, in this model, may have been part of the plan even without the Fall.

Evolutionary

The evolutionary explanation suggests that we were always intended to be more than we are now, but that the next step in becoming truly human required the freely-willed co-operation of an adult human being that had not experienced the confusion of sin. This model sees suffering as being the crucible that forges the new species, the sons and daughters of humankind. Jesus came to finish the task that Adam failed – to take the next step on our behalf. Since then, the spiritual equivalents of genes have been passed on to the faithful through the sacraments, having greater or lesser impact according to the degree of openness to grace of the recipient.

In this model, the incarnation was required by the Fall, and the resurrection is part of our new nature.

Read Full Post »

Dying well

This article in America magazine, by a doctor who is also a priest, gives what I think is a healthy and balanced view on how to die well:

Dying well is not simply a matter of getting our affairs in order and making sure that our health care proxy is informed that we are in the emergency room. It is the time we meet God in a definitive way. Dying well has at least three essential components.

First, medical care needs to be put in proper perspective. No one gets out of this life alive. Doctors can cure us for a while, they can relieve our suffering as we are dying, and they can do a good job of obstructing death when we are clearly dying, if we are so dumb as to let them. A good death for me will require a good doctor. This means that the doctor will be attentive to my wishes, vigilant about symptom control and pain relief; that he or she will be a prudent advisor in the face of sadness and fear, and sensitive to the dynamic that life is never to be taken deliberately but need not be prolonged when the burdens of therapy outweigh the benefits to the patient. But it is also important that medical care not be the focus of dying. The doctor and the other members of the care team are not the stars of the show when we come to the last act. They have important supporting roles.

The key players, however, are the person who is dying, those who love him and God. A good doctor will be clear about the limitations of her art. One sometimes hears physicians say to a person: “I am sorry, but there is nothing more that can be done.” A better response is that of the physician who is wise enough to state: “I have no magic treatment, no new drug, no surgery that is likely to change the course of your disease. But I promise to be with you, to relieve your symptoms and never to abandon you to the experience of your illness.” Putting medical care into its proper perspective means that patients and their families do not always grasp for more and put misplaced hope in doctors and treatments when dying is clearly at hand. In the light of eternal life, and our hope in the resurrection, relentless efforts to prolong the dying process of someone with an incurable illness can seem somewhere between silly and blasphemous.

Second, dying well for people of faith who are Catholic means sensitivity to the moral tradition of the church. This requires finding the mean between those who reject any sort of life-sustaining care and those who think that being Catholic requires that every possible tube and treatment must be thrust upon a person before one can die. The former attitude comes close to euthanasia in its lack of appreciation of the goodness of life and the need to value the gift that God has given us. The second attitude replaces faith in God with vitalism; it suggests that every heartbeat is sacred rather than realizing that life’s absolute value is found in union with God.

Practically speaking, when one is facing a terminal illness the wisdom of the church is that one is not obliged to pursue treatments that are painful, difficult to bear or simply prolong dying. A person who has cancer or advanced emphysema, or is facing the last stages of decline from heart failure should not feel that there is any moral problem in refusing to be resuscitated or declining the aggressive high technology care offered in the intensive care unit.

Third, and most important, dying well means living well with God. Preparation for death should be an everyday affair for the Christian, not in the sense that one is continually revising advance directives or wondering about potential moral conflicts, but in the daily effort to grow in intimacy with the Lord and to live one’s life well. Although planning for death with advance directives, good medical care and moral sensitivity are important, the essential part of dying well is living in Christ.

Read Full Post »

A duty to die?

Mercator has an article on euthanasia that discusses the pressure that can be put on the vulnerable:

It was 1995 and our then governor-general, Bill Hayden, was addressing the College of Physicians during debate on the Northern Territory’s euthanasia laws. The scene was significant, since the dual concern with euthanasia is the corruption of the relationship between the state and its most vulnerable citizens, and between doctors and their most vulnerable patients. Our head of state urged doctors to support euthanasia not only as a right, but also as a positive duty towards society. He reflected on past cultures where the elderly would take their lives when their usefulness had passed, and declared of our own culture: “There is a point when the succeeding generations deserve to be disencumbered of some unproductive burdens.” The next day a retired state governor, Mark Oliphant, publicly supported Hayden’s astonishing message to “unproductive burdens” that they should do the right thing by society. This is the callousing of social attitudes, the insidious pressure on the frail and demoralised, that we could expect within a culture of mercy-killing.

A year earlier in Britain, a House of Lords select committee on medical ethics completed the most thorough enquiry into euthanasia ever undertaken, and concluded in stark contrast to Hayden: “The message which society sends to vulnerable and disadvantaged people should not, however obliquely, encourage them to seek death, but should assure them of our care and support in life.” This committee began with a majority in favour of euthanasia, but ended by rejecting it as unsafe and corrupting public policy: “It would be next to impossible to ensure that every act of euthanasia was truly voluntary. We are concerned that vulnerable people – the elderly, lonely, sick or distressed – would feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to seek early death.”

Doctors have no illusions about the pressures that can be felt by vulnerable people. One patient of mine, a woman with disabilities and minimal self-confidence, received a cruel letter from a close relative effectively telling her she should be dead, and demanding certain arrangements in her will. She then developed cancer. Consider such family dynamics in a setting of legalised euthanasia, and ask what the “right to die” would mean to a cancer patient so isolated and intimidated.

Elsewhere, I found a quote from British philosopher Baroness Warnock:

[Baroness Warnock] told the Church of Scotland’s Life and Work magazine, “If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives – your family’s lives – and you’re wasting the resources of the National Health Service.” In another article for a Norwegian periodical, titled “A Duty to Die?” she suggests, “There’s nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so [commit suicide] for the sake of others as well as yourself.In other contexts, sacrificing oneself for one’s family would be considered good. I don’t see what is so horrible about the motive of not wanting to be an increasing nuisance.”

And an article a couple of years ago in InsideCatholic comments:

To be clear, treatment is denied not because the patient is expected to die; rather, the providers fear the patient might live. Thus, not only are many persons now denied a natural death, but some might even be denied a chance to livea normal life.

Not surprisingly, then, the hallowed “right to die” has evolved into a “duty to die,” and a caste of disposable persons has essentially been created.

This modern concept of futility poses grave danger even to patients who specifically request resuscitation efforts in the event of cardiopulmonary arrest. Indeed, another issue that has bubbled to the surface is the “slow code” — hospital slang suggesting a leisurely walk to the bedside — wherein a code team declines to pursue aggressive measures to resuscitate a patient. In effect, they stage a response that is delayed to the point where the patient’s chances of survival are greatly minimized. When the patient dies, the staff document that “all measures were taken.” The rationale for such a response might be that the patient is “severely terminal” or “demented,” and resuscitation is regarded as “futile,” as the team speculates that the person would have an inadequate quality of life if he were revived.

My father died two years ago, several weeks after a massive stroke left him in a coma. I count our family lucky that he lived in a small rural community, and the local community hospital gave him loving care in the weeks he was dying. I’ve seen what happens in a large city hospital, and I wouldn’t want that kind of mechanical neglect for anyone I loved.

Read Full Post »