Assisted suicides present an unhelpful and dubious choice of relief or continuous pain, writes Fr SeánMacGiollarnáth, O. Carm.
The Hippocratic tradition in medicine is under threat through the removal of traditional protections at the beginning and the end of human life. Law and medicine both reflect dominant tendencies and practices in culture and politics which place a high priority on the desire for individual choice. This has been characterised as expressive individualism, and it understands the individual, in the words of Carter Snead, as “atomised, solitary and defined by his capacity to formulate and pursue future plans of his own invention”. Prof. Snead and others, like Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, have shown this portrait of the human being lacks an awareness of our vulnerability and fragility, and the natural tendency of humans to seek friendship and to act socially and politically.
Response
Consider the effects of Covid-19 on our plans, great and small. The response has taught us that we are social and political creatures. We have seen a capacity to act together for the good of others and to take into account guidance from others. The pandemic has also unveiled our vulnerability. Our public health system, our economy, sports, weddings, holidays, education, even the celebration of the sacraments and our life of worship; no area of human life went untouched and without experiencing some pressure from the pandemic. A virus has put a halt to everything it seems and introduced a radical uncertainty.
Illness too tends to stop us in our tracks and confuse our plans. It has been said, there is never a good time to get sick. And yet there is, for Christians, the belief and knowledge that God is looking after us. St John Henry Newman observes that “God has determined, unless I interfere with His plan, that I should reach that which will be my greatest happiness”. Happiness is our goal.
Such a goal appears to include some suffering on the way. What does Job intend to convey when he tells God: “I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath. What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, visit them every morning, test them every moment?” (Job 7:16-18) According to St Thomas Aquinas, “Job is not to be understood as expressing contempt for the divine concern for men, but as investigating and wondering”. The purpose of this interrogation of reality is, for St Thomas “to show that God would not have such great care for man unless he should have something hidden which makes him capable of perpetual existence. Therefore the very care which God has especially for man demonstrates that there is another life of man after the death of the body”. It seems reasonable to suppose that Job was also in pain and quite frustrated.
Frustration
The frustration we feel is generally first shared with those close to us. Our family, the domestic Church, and our friends are those we first share the burden of our illness with. Pope Francis points out that the family has always been the nearest ‘hospital’.Still today, in so many parts of the world, a hospital is for the privileged few, and is often far away. It is the mother, the father, brother, sisters and godparents who guarantee care and help one to heal. It isn’t always so however, and that is why there is a need to be quietly attentive to the needs of others.
Often families may share their concern through prayers in the local church, or through invoking the prayers of their favourite saints. Family doctors and nurses are part of the chain of solidarity with the sick. The Eucharist, the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Sacrament of the Sick are also part of the journey. It is a reminder that there is real practical help from our neighbours and also from Jesus Christ, the Good Samaritan, who walks with us in our joys and sorrows. I believe that priests and the sick can testify to the power which the Sacrament of the Sick offers. It can give both physical and spiritual support to the sick. It sometimes assists in the recovery and healing of the sick, even apparently terminal illness. After all, in each and every sacrament Jesus Christ is the principal actor who always gives generously and without reserve.
Pope
Both Pope Francis in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in their recent instruction Samaritanus bonus consider the parable of the Good Samaritan. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis notes, Cain is asked “Where is your brother Abel?” (Genesis 4:9). His evasive response, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is not adequate. Pope Francis points out that by the very question he asks, “God leaves no room for an appeal to determinism or fatalism as a justification for our own indifference. Instead, he encourages us to create a different culture, in which we resolve our conflicts and care for one another”. Parables are said to be “like mirrors for man: will he be hard soil or good earth for the word?”. The Good Samaritan interrogates us personally and as a community. Pope Francis points out that at different points in our life, we may be different characters in the penetrating story which Jesus gives us in the Gospel of Luke. He is also fully aware of the only superficially paradoxical possibility that “those who claim to be unbelievers can sometimes put God’s will into practice better than believers” (FT 74).
The brutal experience of the man who was unfortunate enough to fall the victim of is a reminder of the human condition, and in particular human waywardness. The effects of original sin, that cluster of weaknesses in our condition, namely a darkened intellect, wayward desires, weakened moral strength and self-centred wills, can wreak havoc. Such a view is not confined to Christians or religious people. Philippa Foot recalled when she returned to Oxford just after the Second World War asking herself how such horrors as the concentration camps could have occurred.
I mention this because such weakness can lead us from what is good towards what is only apparently good. One of the difficulties with the Dying With Dignity Bill, is that it provides little or no context for our life, and all its aspects: spiritual, moral, intellectual, friendships and family. There is a risk that the focus may come to rest entirely on those moments of anguish or pain in which there is allegedly no relief, and present an unhelpful and dubious choice of relief or continuous pain. There is a wider context in which God is looking after us through palliative care, our family and friends and offering us the gift of grace. Christ is present in the one who is sick, those who care for them, and in the power of His grace which reminds us, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).
