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End-of-life issues come clearly into focus
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November 1, 20202020 has been a year to remember. As the holidays approach, people long to return to old routines in work, school, and socializing without fear and without social distancing. Yet at this time, the Church’s liturgical calendar and highest teaching office are calling us beyond a return to routine, to reflect on ultimate realities, and to face new moral challenges in society.
The month of November is more than a kick-off to the holidays. In the liturgical calendar, November is a time to focus on the “Last Things” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1020-1065). The month begins with the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. November also marks the end of the liturgical year, so the Scripture readings for Mass draw our attention to ultimate realities—the radical choices involved in accepting the Gospel, the end times, and the Last Judgment. Despite our wish for relief after this year of pandemic, we should take this time to renew our focus on the ultimate realities taught by faith.
The Church recently gave Catholics a new resource for reflection and action in the form of a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Samaritanus Bonus (“The Good Samaritan: on the Care of Persons in the Critical and Terminal Phases of Life”) was released in September. As the subtitle suggests, Samaritanus Bonus is concerned with the challenges posed by death and dying. The way that people are being conditioned to approach dying and death in the 21st century is bringing new challenges, especially given the increasing spread of legal euthanasia and assisted suicide.
There are three things worth noticing in the CDF’s letter.
First, Samaritanus Bonus reminds us that we cannot adequately approach the challenge of dying and death without the resources of a living faith. All of us have witnessed the decline in religious practice in the United States, especially among Catholics. When Catholics stop practicing their faith, they lose access to grace and to guidance from the Church. Samaritanus Bonus reminds us that human suffering and death have been changed definitively by the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Only with this perspective and with a share in His life can we approach death with hope.
Second, although Samaritanus Bonus was not written to address COVID-19, the CDF reminds us of our perennial duties to care for the sick and to accompany the dying with effective and ethical interventions. Samaritanus Bonus reiterates important Church teachings about ordinary interventions at the end of life, about the need to provide food and water to the sick and injured, and the good of principled palliative care. This focus on the basics is not misplaced. The COVID-19 panic caused some states to overlook threats to the elderly in nursing homes and some hospitals to ban all access to priests and to the sacraments.
Finally, Samaritanus Bonus provides updated guidance regarding assisted suicide and euthanasia. Just in the past five years, five U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Canada have legalized assisted suicide. Samaritanus Bonus strongly reaffirms the Church’s condemnation of these practices and, more importantly, issues limits on providing sacraments to people intent on ending their lives. This guidance is needed because some bishops in Canada and Europe, out of a misplaced sense of compassion, appeared to permit access to the sacraments in these cases.
We are not finished with the challenge of COVID-19. Rather than seek a return to our old routines, however, we are called to face the perennial realities of dying and death with a renewed commitment to live out our faith in challenging times.
JOHN F. BREHANY, PH.D., S.T.L., is director of institutional relations at the National Catholic Bioethics Center and past executive director of the Catholic Medical Association.
