… read about the witness of Canadian teenagers before the “Dying with Dignity” commission and learn why Canadian journalist Laureen Pindera said “these people speak not simply about what treatment to give their patients, but about how they accompany them in their journey of suffering. They speak about how to love them.”
the knowledge of faith becomes the knowledge of reality … Read More »
“Those of us who have spent time in the company of people with mortal illness have learned from them that we are always challenged to know more and to help more effectively but, above all, to listen. Sometimes there will be no answers to give to those in apparently desperate situations, and we find ourselves
face to face … with our own need Read More »
… in the setting of physician assisted suicide and euthanasia … “The secular version of a “good death” is a terribly lonely one. Placing the emphasis on unbearable suffering and the patient’s autonomy, or right to “die with dignity,” is supremely ironic because the patient is never truly autonomous as he asks the community, in
the irony of patient autonomy … Read More »
… the Parliamentary Council of Europe has affirmed that “Euthanasia, in the sense of the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit, must always be prohibited.” Bioedge discusses
protecting human dignity … Read More »
… the Mystery … or I myself … ? As Hutter explains, magnanimity – natural hope – protects us from despair because it “anticipates a final and meaningful integration of all my experiences in a worthy narrative … even if I will not be its final narrator.” Those who pursue physician assisted suicide/euthanasia (and their
who will be the final narrator of my life … ? Read More »
… “Evidence suggests that legalized PAS will result in a greater number of suicides more generally (and not simply amongst the population who opt for legalized PAS). We will have great difficulty, on the one hand, giving our and medicine’s approval to suicide as the solution to complex problems at the end of life while,
the vicious cycle of suicide … Read More »
A subitanea morte, libera nos, Domine … “from a death that is sudden and unprepared for, deliver us, o Lord.” To be taken away suddenly, without being able to make oneself ready, without having had time to prepare – this is the supreme danger from which man wants to be saved. He wants to be
… “On television, death is presented as a thrilling spectacle tailor-made for alleviating the general boredom of life. In the last analysis, of course, the covert aim of this reduction of death to the status of an object is just the same as with the bourgeois taboo on the subject. Death is to be deprived
death trivialized … Read More »
Everyone has tried to tame me, tranquilize me, keep me from suffering, and make everything more bearable, to sedate a restless heart that however had no intention to stop desiring and asking for more. Then you arrived … The encounter with you created in me a demand for my whole life, every second,and I don’t want
to sedate a restless heart … Read More »
… 2010 Annual Report … The vast majority of the 72 persons who killed themselves did so for reasons of control and autonomy – not intractable suffering (p. 7) The vast minority (2 of the 72) underwent any kind of mental health evaluation. related posts here and here …
washington state’s experience with assisted suicide … Read More »
