Georgetown Univ Prof supports death with dignity

In 2008 Georgetown University Philosophy professor Tom L. Beauchamp coauthored Principles of Biomedical Ethics, a widely used book in bioethics courses, in which he sanctions and defends “physician-assisted dying.”

 

According to a Winter 2008 Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly article by J. Brian Benestad, Beauchamp and his coauthor pronounce unconvincing “some of the arguments against the legalization of ‘physician-assisted dying.'” Throughout the book the authors are redefining terms “that used to have nothing to do with administering death-producing drugs,” explains Benestad. For them, “Lethal pills are called medication; helping suffering patients to kill themselves is called virtuous (beneficent, just, etc.). Not helping these patients is a failure to respect their dignity.” In Principles, the authors state: “We maintain that physician assistance in hastening death is best viewed as part of a continuum of medical care.” Benestad counters the argument, citing “the medical profession’s devotion to heal and refuse to kill – its ethical center – will be permanently destroyed” by such a policy. (courtesy of the Cardinal Newman Society)

 

So much for professors at so-called Catholic universities either thinking with the Church or at least not publicly contradicting Catholic teaching. Is this beyond the exercise of academic freedom viz. faith and reason? It’s interesting Beauchamp received the Pellegrino Medal in 2004 which honors recipients for contributions made in healthcare ethics following the spirit of the father of the American bioethics movement, Dr. Edmund Pellegrino. Pellegrino is a practicing Catholic and on faculty of Georgetown.

John Paul’s influence on Archbishop Dolan’s ministry in NY

In a Wall Street Journal article Christopher Willcox explains why Archbishop Timothy Dolan will be received by the John Paul Generation. Read the article.

 

I have no doubt that the Servant of God Pope John Paul II is making his intercession before the Throne of Grace for the Church in New York, and for the effective, holy pastoral service of the new archbishop. AND I also think with Archbishop Dolan’s nomination to the See of New York we’ll be identifying key aspects of the current pope’s approach to theology and saying “Pope Benedict generation” is leading the charge in proclaiming Christ in the 21st century. Remembering that the faith is always proposed and never imposed the proclamation of the Gospel has little to with politics and much to do with the Truth and salvation. If we neglect the fact the Church is first a sacrament before it’s a sociology then we’ve lost a major piece in knowing Christ. The question is whether we believe in the promises of the hundred-fold of Jesus.

Saints Perpetua & Felicity


St Perpetua & Felicity.jpgTheirs is the kingdom of heaven who despising a worldly life have attained the rewards of the kingdom, and have washed their robes in the Blood of the Lamb.

 

We beseech You, O Lord our Savior, grant us to revere with unceasing devotion the glorious victories of Your holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicity; may we at least honor with lowly homage those whose praises we can not sing worthily.

 

Read more on these third century Martyrs of North Africa. Today’s saints have been honored by the Church since the fourth century in Rome. History tells us that Saint Perpetua was of Carthaginian nobility and Saint Felicity was a slave girl but both were equal in their Christian faith. The Roman martyrology says that they were sent to their deaths because of their Christian faith in A.D. 203. Since the wild beasts would not eat them they were put to death by the sword. They are both mentioned in the Roman Canon of the Mass.

Washington State approves suicide as a “right”: Is it truly death with dignity?

Voters in the State of Washington approved Initiative 1000, the so-called Death with Dignity Act in November. According to the media it’s modeled closely the Oregon law allowing physicians to prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients determined to have six months or less to live. Oregon‘s suicide law is now 10 years old and Washington has become the second American state to legalize assisted suicide.

 

As a result of last year’s state ballot Initiative 2000, terminally ill patients in Washington State can now obtain lethal medications from doctors in order to kill themselves. Washington‘s hospitals are now forming a suicide plan to facilitate this newly found “right.”

 

Suicide is a tragedy. People who elect to do this act are not thinking in a right manner and are looking for a way out of their pain, sometimes they say they want to ease the pain of loved ones who care for them. Whatever the reason for acting this way is, their desperation leads to a permanent self-inflicted act leading to their intended death. Suicide prematurely and violently leaves loved ones to pick up the pieces post-mortem. Many are physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted from their health issues which is understandable: chronic illness can be painful but suicide is an inadequate way to deal with the harsh reality of life.

 

The Church’s teaching is: “Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God” (Catechism, 2281).

 

But quoting the Catechism is insufficient in dealing with the issue at hand. Let’s not be confused: we need to know and follow what the Church teaches. Her wisdom is immensely reliable and it ought to form our conscience. Here I want to raise the matter of dealing with the issue pastorally, lovingly with courage and strength. No statement of teaching is going to ease the pain of illness or feelings of desperation. Only the love and mercy of the one who made us can do that. The Lord loves and cherishes each one of us, and He gives the grace to sustain us until the moment of natural death. The Lord knows our pain and our human struggle because He is a man. What the Washington and Oregon state laws do is replace the love the Lord and family offer us with a cold mechanism releasing us from our human need. These laws replace the reality of humanity with a cold, shallow perfunctory “right” that gives a person the possibility of hurting themselves and family and friends deeply not to mention it wounds their relationship with the Lord (whether they know it or not).

 

Responding to the poignant human need of those who face the hard fact of someone taking their own life, the Catholic Information Service commissioned a booklet dealing with this subject. It was our effort to help those who are looking for truth and love and the assistance of the Church. You can order a copy of Coping with a Suicide: Catholic Teaching and Pastoral Practice by emailing or calling the office (cis@kofc.org or 203.752.4267and tell them you saw the ad here) The feelings of sadness which result from the violence of suicide are never removed from the hearts and minds of the survivors even if they try to believe that Auntie is in a better place (a saccharine nosegay that whitewashes the pain temporarily). While the deceased is in the hands of God and clearly live in His mercy, we can never be presumptuous to believe that it is “alright” because “God will deal with it”: the reality life is far more important than me and my own needs. The act of suicide is an act of desperation; the person who does (or thinks of committing the act) acts from feelings of exhaustion, fear, and a false sense of security. Our human response needs to be love. Our response as Christians needs to be one of faithfulness to the Lord who made us and it is He who will call us home, and it is our responsibility to be agents of reconciliation showing mercy and forgiveness.

Listening with your heart, Sts. Benedict & Bernard say

Saint Bernard, the great Cistercian Abbot, gave a Chapter talk to his monks during Lent. In it he admonished them:

 


St Bernard detail.JPG“Observe carefully what you love, what you fear, what makes you rejoice, what causes you to be sad. See whether under your religious habit you have a worldly soul, and whether, hidden by the cloth of conversion, your heart is perverse. The whole of the heart is in these four affections and in these four is comprised, as I see it, all that is involved when you turn to God with your whole heart” (Sermo 2.3 in Quadragesima PL 183: 172D).

 

It is interesting the way Saint Bernard speaks of the heart. Our own Holy Father, Saint Benedict began his Rule for Monasteries by teaching us to listen with the ear of our heart. Listen to the love, fear, rejoicing, and sadness that lie in our heart.  The life of the monk allows us to take seriously the heart, and to raise the heart in our prayer. Saint John Damascene put it this way in commenting upon the Transfiguration, an event the Church celebrates this coming Sunday, the Second Sunday of Lent:

 

“Why did he lead his disciples up the mountain? Scripture in its moral sense refers to the virtues as mountains. The apex of all the virtues and, as it were, their citadel is charity…. Accordingly, it is fitting that we leave behind all worldly concerns of the earth and pass beyond the body of lowliness as we ascend to the highest and divine eminence. There we may behold at last those things that transcend every other view”(Homilia in Transfigurationem Domini, 10 PG 96: 561-2).

Tomas Munk, Jesuit novice killed by the Nazis

Tomas MunkLast year the Society of Jesus in Slovakia has put a considerable effort in drawing the attention to a novice, Tomas Munk, who converted to Catholicism from Judaism in the late 1930s.

In the spring of 2008 a  book of Ivan Petransky about his life was published Zivot pod hviezdou (“A life under a star”). People from around the Jesuit community in Ruzomberok have organized a concert to remember this young brave man who in his early life had written: Amor Christi usque ad oblivionem sui – Love for Christ until self-oblivion. The local TV station has produced a documentary DVD on his life and people are very much interested in the witness this young man has got to offer. Parts of the published book were broadcasted on the Catholic radio station in the country.

Tomas Munk was born in Budapest on January 29, 1924 as the first son of a Jewish couple. After conversion in 1939 he was received in the Catholic Church. Tomas studied in Bratislava and partly in Ruzomberok. He decided to become priest in the Society of Jesus where he entered on July 30, 1943. In the autumn of 1944, Nazi soldiers came in Ruzomberok. After several months the whole family was arrested and the Nazi eventually came to the Novitiate and took him away as a Jewish convert. According to a fellow novice, now a respected Jesuit, Tomas confided to him having prayed all night in the Novitiate chapel: “I have sacrificed my life for my nation, for its conversion and for the Church.” Tomas was killed on the way to the concentration camp.

A point of connection for me with Tomas Munk is that we share the same birth date but 45 years apart from each other, and that we had a love of the Society. May he interceded for all of us.

A friend visits

Michael Philips & PAZ 5 March 2009.JPGA very dear friend was visiting me at the Abbey this week. Father Michael is an Orthodox monk following the Rule of Saint Benedict at a small monastery called Christminster just outside Toronto, Canada. It was delightful to have him here for a few days; until recently he was on the left coast of these United States and so I am grateful that he’s back in the east, well, sort of east….

The Wiki note on Christminster

Retreat offered for priests during Easter Week 2009

I would like to call your attention to the forthcoming retreat for priests that will take place during the Octave of Easter (April 13-17, 2009), at Malvern, PA. You find all information at www.clonline.us.

“Eight years ago, Msgr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the Movement Communion and Liberation, suggested that the diocesan priests in the United States following the charism of the Movement find ways to accompany their brother priests, demoralized by the image of the priesthood created by the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors. As a result, members of the Movement invited their parish priests to participate in a retreat seeking to retrieve and strengthen their experience of the incomparable beauty and unsurpassable value of their vocation.

 

Since 2000, such retreats have been held every year in places associated with the history of the Church in America, such as Emmitsburg, MD; St. Augustine, FL, and others. The joy and gratitude with which so many priests have responded to these retreats is a verifiable confirmation of the sacramental bond at the origin of our priestly identity.” (from the invitation letter sent to Bishops and priests)

I strongly recommend that you get in touch with all priests you know – particularly the ones who have shown even a little interest in our experience – and propose them to participate in the retreat. If money is an issue please feel free to let them know that the Knights of Columbus have once more graciously granted some money to help priests to participate.

For any further information please contact Olivetta (clnationaloffice@clhac.com or at 914-548-1275).

Blair defends the role faith

Tony Blair is defending the place of faith in public discourse and saying that it needs to show itself in action. The some time British Prime Minister entered into full communion with the Catholic Church following his leaving public office.

Can you give reasons for your belief in Jesus Christ? If so, are you truly following Christ and being a good-enough witness of the Gospel and the Church?

Follow Blair’s foundation, The Tony Blair Faith Foundation