I resonate with what you write. I too have read Nicolas Diat's book, A Time to Die (with its foreword by the holy Cardinal, Robert Sarah) and found it very instructive - both in the way the religious communities wanted to accompany their brother monk as he lay dying, and in the way the medical authorities sometimes interfered in this dying process with well-meaning but unnecessary interventions.
It is almost inevitable in the UK that the new government after the General Election this year will be a Labour one. Sir Keir Starmer, the expected Labour prime minister, has already promised that if he is elected he will allow a free vote on the question of euthanasia for the very sick. The media always weights this subject on the side of euthanasia - never on the pro-life side. Given that we have had legal abortion in the UK for over 50 years, desensitising us to the idea of routinely taking life when we find it inconvenient, there will be a fierce fight between the pro-death and pro-life forces when the question is again raised in Parliament. The medical profession, up to now, has always been against becoming accomplices to murder - but I suspect this is slowly changing.
As you point out, for Christians the process of dying and death is every bit as important as birth. I am not against pain control - as the hospice movement understands it - but I am against the unspoken euthanasia of deliberately hastening a sick patient's death with heavy doses of morphine, ostensibly to make the patient 'comfortable' and 'free of pain', but actually to hurry on death. Of course, we are also free to say 'No' to pain relief and to accept the inevitable suffering that ensues for the sake of our souls and the souls of others. The Church needs to emphasise the redemptive power of suffering - against the secular assumption that it is something to be avoided at all costs.
For secular society this world is all there is, so it must be clung to for fear of death and then when death is on the horizon it must be controlled, sanitised and not spoken of. When one considers how the early Christian martyrs embraced death I think our modern age lacks courage - and faith.
I do wonder when the medical profession switched from healers to risk-prevention personnel and murderers-for-hire. It might have something to do with money, but I'd have to research to make sure.
I totally agree with you, Francis. I think one of the Catholic Church's main benefits is her teaching of redemptive suffering. It was a revolutionary idea to me as a former Protestant. I do not think the martyrs would have jumped into the fire (sometimes literally, as in the case of St. Apollonia) if that doctrine was not operative.
I resonate with what you write. I too have read Nicolas Diat's book, A Time to Die (with its foreword by the holy Cardinal, Robert Sarah) and found it very instructive - both in the way the religious communities wanted to accompany their brother monk as he lay dying, and in the way the medical authorities sometimes interfered in this dying process with well-meaning but unnecessary interventions.
It is almost inevitable in the UK that the new government after the General Election this year will be a Labour one. Sir Keir Starmer, the expected Labour prime minister, has already promised that if he is elected he will allow a free vote on the question of euthanasia for the very sick. The media always weights this subject on the side of euthanasia - never on the pro-life side. Given that we have had legal abortion in the UK for over 50 years, desensitising us to the idea of routinely taking life when we find it inconvenient, there will be a fierce fight between the pro-death and pro-life forces when the question is again raised in Parliament. The medical profession, up to now, has always been against becoming accomplices to murder - but I suspect this is slowly changing.
As you point out, for Christians the process of dying and death is every bit as important as birth. I am not against pain control - as the hospice movement understands it - but I am against the unspoken euthanasia of deliberately hastening a sick patient's death with heavy doses of morphine, ostensibly to make the patient 'comfortable' and 'free of pain', but actually to hurry on death. Of course, we are also free to say 'No' to pain relief and to accept the inevitable suffering that ensues for the sake of our souls and the souls of others. The Church needs to emphasise the redemptive power of suffering - against the secular assumption that it is something to be avoided at all costs.
For secular society this world is all there is, so it must be clung to for fear of death and then when death is on the horizon it must be controlled, sanitised and not spoken of. When one considers how the early Christian martyrs embraced death I think our modern age lacks courage - and faith.
I do wonder when the medical profession switched from healers to risk-prevention personnel and murderers-for-hire. It might have something to do with money, but I'd have to research to make sure.
I totally agree with you, Francis. I think one of the Catholic Church's main benefits is her teaching of redemptive suffering. It was a revolutionary idea to me as a former Protestant. I do not think the martyrs would have jumped into the fire (sometimes literally, as in the case of St. Apollonia) if that doctrine was not operative.