January 9, 2000 |
With the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, the Christmas season officially comes to an end. It has been a season of grace, joy and prayer for our parish community, thanks to the hours and hours of work of the Art and Environment committee, the musicians, and all involved in the liturgy this Christmas season. The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan by John the Baptist sets the stage for his public ministry which will be proclaimed in the short space of Ordinary Time which is in front of us. Dr. Reginald Fuller in Preaching the Lectionary, notes regarding this text that:
Mark relates this event [the Baptism] as an inner experience of Jesus - his call a unique eschatological ministry, but that at the same time, Mark, by recording it in his Gospel, makes it clear for his readers an epiphany of who Jesus was. In the coming weeks we shall read of Jesus' words and deeds, culminating first in his transfiguration, and then, after the move to Jerusalem, in his passion. The baptism of Jesus puts us in the right frame of mind to hear these stories, the whole of our redemption. This liturgical pilgrimage with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem is a paradigm of our whole Christian life of discipleship, which was inaugurated for us at our Baptism.
Well January 1st has come and gone and NOTHING happened. All of the dire predictions just didn't take place. Many planners for the West Coast cities were very surprised and a great many of the people who expected the worst. The celebrations around the world went off without the looked-for calamity. But Christians should not have been surprised. A long time ago, when our Lord walked the earth, he was asked what signs should they look for. His answer was that it was not for Him to know. If our Lord did not know and said it was not for Him to know, why do any of us humans have the gall to think we do? HAPPY NEW YEAR! It is a great time to be alive!
This weekend we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. It is the conclusion of the Christmas season. We now look forward to celebrating the events of Jesus' life, including his death and resurrection. The following Proclamation of the Date of Easter is often chanted after the Gospel reading on the Solemnity of the Epiphany. It follows the pattern of the Proclamation of the Birth of Christ which is sung each year at Midnight Mass.
Dear brothers and sisters:
The glory of the Lord has shone upon us, and shall ever be manifest among us, until the day of his return. Through the rhythms of times and seasons, let us celebrate the mysteries of salvation.
Let us recall the year's culmination, the Easter Triduum of the Lord: his last supper, his crucifixion, his burial, and his rising, celebrated between the evening of the twentieth of April and evening of the twenty second of April. Each Easter as on each Sunday, the Holy church makes present the great and saving deed by which Christ has forever conquered sin and death.
From Easter are reckoned all the days we keep holy. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, will occur on the eighth of March.
The Ascension of the Lord will be commemorated on the first of June.
Pentecost, the joyful conclusioon of the season of Easter, will be celebrated on the eleventh of June.
And this year the First Sunday of Advent will be on the third of December.
Likewise, the pilgrim Church proclaims the Passover of Christ in the feasts of the holy Mother of God, in the feasts of the Apostles and Saints, and in the commemoration of the faithful departed.
To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, Lord of time and history, be endless praise forever and ever.
Amen!
One of the first "heresies" that the early Christians had to face was the false teaching that Jesus was not divine, that he was only a human being who had some divine powers. Hilary was one of the major defenders of the human and divine natures of Jesus. After becoming a Christian, he was elected the bishop of Portiers in what is now France. The laity and the clergy elected him to be their bishop. He was married and had a daughter when he became bishop. Hilary died in 367 or 368 and was proclaimed a doctor of the church in 1851. He is the patron saint for those who are bitten by snakes.
My Dear Family in Christ:
We celebrate the full revelation of God as the Magi come to bring gifts. Today we acknowledge, once again, that the saving message, the Good News is for all peoples.
Life does not just pass from day to day. We have the opportunity to live by the grace that God has bestowed on us. The beauty of seeing life with the eyes of faith is that it is more than following the laws of nature; it is being open to God's plan that life is sacred and filled with meaning.
As the Magi came from the East to adore the Prince of Peace we need to be mindful that sometimes outsiders point out to us the significance and value of life. Let the act of adoration that we celebrate deepen our awareness of God in our daily lives.
We have a choice. We can endure each day as a routine or live in the light of faith. Seeing the hand of God in all that surrounds gives purpose to our actions and deepens our commitment to be part of the history that brings the Good News of salvation to a world that is searching for the Truth.
Father Ron
The new year, turn of the century, even the millennium (if you are not a purist) got me reflecting over the holidays. I guess it was more reminicing than really reflecting. Sitting here and looking back, let me share some thoughts...I was born before television, penicillin, polio shots, or frozen food. I was born before Xerox, plastic, videos, credit cards, or ballpoint pens. I was born before air conditioning, dish washers, drip-dry clothes and well before men walked on the moon. Captain Marvel was pure science fiction and would never be real. People got married and then lived together. Fast food came during Lent and always meant "no meat." Heart transplants, word processors, and digital computers might have been in someone's mind, but they weren't talked about openly. Hardware meant nuts and bolts and I'm sure the word "software" didn't even exist. But then neither did FAX or e-mail and I was the telephone answering machine in our family and I had better get the message straight. When I picked up the phone, a live voice said number please, and then asked me mine. A joint was the Sunday roast around which the family gathered. Ecstasy was for saints and a gay person was the life of the party. A chip was a piece of wood or a thin sliced deep- fried potato. Change, plenty of change, has been part of my life and there is more to come. How much more change is yet to come? Plenty! When I look back and see how much this world has changed just since 1945, the end of WW II, I really shouldn't be afraid of what's ahead. Not all these changes are to my liking, but many I've embraced enthusiastically. How did I ever survive without air conditioning? I haven't seen an ice card in a front window in years, have you? How would we make it without a refrigerator door as the family communication center? I have an e-mail address and enjoy it. I hear from people across the world that would never write a letter. I am writing this article on Microsoft Word and it makes writing so much easier than this pick-and peck typist ever had it on a typewriter. This could go on and on for change is endless. The important thing is not to fear change. It is your choice not to like change or some particular change, but each of us does change. Some resist change. Some love change. Some are very selective of changes. But change we do. And we will at a faster pace than ever in this new millennium. Are you ready for the rollercoaster ride?
Father Michael Doyle, OSM
In 1955, I was assigned to my first pastorate. It was St. Patrick Church, Osage City and St. Patrick Church, Scranton as a mission. After a couple of years living in Osage City, my mother came to live with me and be the housekeeper. (Any wonder that I am the spoiled member of our large family!) Some time later, I was saying the early Mass at Osage City on a Sunday morning. The gospel for that Sunday was the Wedding Feast at Cana. Of course, I gave my usual stirring sermon (that was before we called them homilies) and we were finished with the recitation of the Creed, of course, in Latin.
The Offertory of the Mass was beginning, and the Altar boy came to me and said there were no cruets for serving the water and wine. I searched pockets and could find no keys to give to the boy so as to run over to the Rectory and get the cruets from the refrigerator.
How was I to continue the Mass and not panic. I recalled the gospel where Mary says to Jesus: "Son, they have no wine." I turned around to the congregation and spied my mother among them, and I said: "Mother, we have no wine." She had a key to the Rectory and hastened to get the cruets. Meanwhile the congregation split with laughter.
What a blessing Mothers have been down through the ages.
Father Robert A. Burger
Question: Why are the Pope's encyclicals so hard to find? What is the Pope's phone number?
Answer: The Pope's encyclicals are very accessible. Trinity House and I. Donnelly are two of the book stores in Kansas City that carry all the papal encyclicals. Also check your local public library which can get you a copy of an encyclical through inter-library loan with a seminary library. Finally, all the encyclicals are at your fingertips on the Internet.
As to the Pope's phone number, I'm sorry I don't have his direct line! However, if you would like to write the Pope, here is his address: His Holiness John Paul II/Vatican City, Vatican City State, Europe/00120.
By Richard M. Doerflinger and Carlos F. Gomez, M.D., Ph.D.
Some time ago an ad appeared in a medical journal promoting a new pain- killing drug. To emphasize that this new product could relieve pain without sleepiness or other side-effects, the ad began with a slogan: Stop the pain. Not the patient.
The outcome of our society's debate on physician-assisted suicide may depend on how well we communicate - and act upon - a similar message. We are living at a time when some doctors and lawmakers think that the best solution for some patients' suffering is to give them lethal drugs for suicide. Catholics committed to the dignity of each human person must insist: Kill the pain. Not the patient.
It is a compelling message. Some opinion polls show support for assisted suicide when it is presented as the only relief for a dying patient in unbearable pain. But when Americans are offered an alternative, they overwhelmingly say that society should concentrate on ensuring pain control and compassionate care for such patients - not on helping them take their lives.
This preference is even stronger among dying patients themselves. When the medical journal The Lancet reported on interviews with cancer patients on June 29, 1996, it found that dying patients experiencing significant pain were more opposed to assisted suicide than the general public. Patients with pain do not seem to view euthanasia or physician- assisted suicide as the appropriate response to poor pain management, wrote Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel a director of the study. Indeed, oncology patients in pain may be suspicious that if euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide are legalized, the medical care system may not focus sufficient resources on provision of pain relief and palliative care.
Realizing that assisted suicide is less popular than improved palliative care, euthanasia advocates have resorted to the claim that there is really not much difference between the two. Their argument goes like this:
Let's be honest. Doctors commonly practice euthanasia now, under the guise of pain control. They give dying patients massive doses of morphine to suppress their breathing, and then call their death a mere 'side-effect.' They justify this hypocrisy by invoking an invention of Medieval theologians called 'the principle of double effect.' Sometimes they even sedate these patients into unconsciousness so they can starve them to death. This 'terminal sedation' is really slow euthanasia. It would be far more candid, as well as more humane to practice euthanasia openly.
This argument has appeared in newspaper opinion pieces, medical journals, and briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1996 it was even endorsed to some extent by two federal appeals courts that sought to give constitutional protection to physician-assisted suicide.
Yet the American medical profession, and the Supreme Court, rejected this argument. To understand why they were right to do so, we must explore two realities: the facts about modern pain control, and the meaning of that so- called Medieval invention, the principle of double effect.
Many doctors hesitate to give dying patients adequate pain relief because they fear that high doses of painkillers such as morphine will suppress the breathing reflex and cause death. Yet we now know that this fear is based on false assumptions, and on inadequate training of physicians in pain management techniques. Even among oncologists, we probably deal with more patients in severe pain, there is too little knowledge of the medically appropriate use of analgesic drugs.
In reality, a very large dose of morphine may well cause death - if given to a healthy person who is not in pain and has not received morphine before. But when administered for pain, such drugs are taken up first by the patient's pain receptors. In fact, patients regularly receiving morphine for pain quickly build up a resistance to side-effects such as respiratory suppression, so they can easily tolerate doses that would cause death in other people.
Fortunately they build up a tolerance to the side-effects far more quickly than to the drugs' analgesic effects - so doctors need not hesitate to increase dosages when needed to relieve pain. The question, What is the maximum dose of morphine for a cancer patient in pain?, has one answer: The dose that will relieve the pain. As long as a patient is awake and in pain, the risk of hastening death by increasing the dose of narcotics is virtually zero. Unrelieved pain is itself a stimulant, which overwhelms any depressive effects of narcotics. Patients whose unrelieved pain is distorting the very fabric of their lives need adequate pain control the way a diabetic needs insulin to function properly.
Very rarely it may be necessary to induce sleep to relieve pain and other distress in the final stage of dying. Euthanasia advocates call this terminal sedation, but it is the same kind of sedation that is sometimes needed to calm distressed or restless patients with non-terminal conditions. While some terminally ill patients may die under such sedation, this is generally because they were imminently dying already.
In competent medical hands, sedation for imminently dying patients is a humane, appropriate and medically established approach to what is often called intractable suffering. It does not kill the patient, but it can make his or her suffering bearable. It may also allow a physician the time to re-assess a patient's pain needs: The terminally ill sedated patient may later be withdrawn from the sedatives and brought back to consciousness, with his or her pain under control.
The factual evidence supports these claims. In 1992 the Journal of the American Medical Association (FAMA) reported on 97 terminally ill patients who died after life support was withheld or withdrawn. Sixty-eight of the patients received painkilling drugs or sedatives to relieve pain and other distress while dying Ñ and they lived longer than the patients who did not receive drugs. The study found that the dosages of these drugs were chosen to ensure relief of suffering, not to hasten death.
Only recently has the medical profession begun to appreciate that unrelieved pain can itself hasten death. It can weaken the patient, suppress his or her immune system, and induce
depression and suicidal feelings. It can keep patients from living out their families and friends. So adequate pain relief can actually lengthen life. According to a FAMA news item of March 25, 1992, part of modern medicine's task may be that of killing pain before it kills the patient. Or as the Catholic Health Association says in its 1993 guide Care of the Dying: A Catholic Perspective: Unrelieved agony will shorten a life more surely than adequate doses or morphine.
In short, when dosages of painkilling drugs are adjusted to relieve patients' pain, there is little if any risk that they will hasten death. This fact alone should put to rest the myth that pain control is euthanasia by another name.
What of the rare case when providing pain relief or sedation does risk hastening death? Is this really the same thing as deliverately killing a patient?
Centuries of Catholic moral tradition say it is not. Sometimes it is impossible to achieve some good effect without causing a bad effect as well. When an act has both a good and a bad effect, we should ask ourselves whether it meets four criteria.
First, the act itself must be good or at least morally indifferent; giving medication to relieve pain certainly meets this test. Second, the good effect must not be attained by means of the bad effect Ñwe cannot claim, like Jack Kevorkian, that we may deliberately kill suffering people because once they are dead they can't suffer. Third, the bad effect must not be intended; we cannot give pain medication in order to end pain and cause death. Fourth, there must be a serious reason for pursuing the good effect; it would be irresponsible to risk hastening death to relieve an ordinary headache.
Taken together, these criteria have become known in Catholic moral reasoning as the principle of double effect. Euthanasia supporters like to emphasize the principle's Catholic origins so they can dismiss it as an arcane Medieval invention. Dr. Timothy Quill, for example, argues that it should not be used in our pluralistic society because it originated in the context of a particular religious tradition: (New England Journal of Medicine, December 11, 1997).
But one might as well rescind laws against robbing banks on the grounds that Thou shalt not steal comes from a particular religious tradition. A moment's reflection will show us that the principle of double effect is no Catholic peculiarity, but simply good common sense.
When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sought to establish a right to assisted suicide in 1996, its opinion rejected the distinction between intended and unintended hastening of death. Judge Kleinfeld's dissenting opinion used a down-to-earth example to show how wrong the court's majority opinion was. When General Eisenhower ordered American soldiers onto the beaches of Normandy, he wrote, he knew that he was sending many American soldiers to certain death, despite his best efforts to minimize casualties. His purpose, though, was to... liberate Europe from the Nazis. The majority's theory of ethics would imply that this purpose was legally and ethically indistinguishable from a purpose of killing American soldiers. Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the appeals court's decision and upheld the principle of double effect, citing Judge Kleinfeld's historical example to illustrate its moral and legal validity.
Students of Bible history could draw the point out further. When King David was overcome by desire for the wife of Uriah the Hittite, he ordered Uriah to the front lines with the express purpose of making sure he was killed (2 Wm 11:15-17). That was an act of murder, concealed by wartime. Anyone who cannot tell the difference between King David at his most sinful and General Eisenhower's decision about D-day should not be entrusted with life-and-death decisions!
The importance of intentions in making moral decisions should be clear to all physicians, who routinely prescribe medicines and treatments that may have unhappy or unforeseen consequences. If, despite everyone's best efforts, a patient stops breathing and dies on the operating table from anesthesia during a delicate operation, is the surgeon a killer? If so, the medical profession is filled with unintentional murderers. A more honest appraisal would be to admit that human life is fragile, that actions can have unexpected or unintended consequences, and that human beings - including skilled and ethically responsible physicians - are fallible.
Are there boderline cases where people's intentions are not clear? Are there instances when it is irresponsible to risk hastening death even as a side- effect? Of course. The principle of double effect does not mean that causing death is justified whenever it is not directly intended. But the distinction is a useful tool for more decisions. In modern medicine, quite literally, we couldn't live without it.
In important ways, assisted suicide and good palliative care are not only distinct - they are radically opposed to each other. Consider the following:
Control of pain and suffering eliminates the demand for assisted suicide. As Dr. Herbert Hendin notes in his 1997 book Seduced by Death, some terminally ill patients have suicidal thoughts, but these patients usually respond well to treatment for depressive illness and pain medication and are then grateful to be alive. Such treatment responds to the underlying reasons why patients ask for death, instead of treating the patient himself as the problem to be eliminated. When pain control and other care improves, assisted suicide becomes largely irrelevant.
Assisted suicide undermines good pain management. During the Supreme Court's January 1997 oral arguments on its assisted suicide cases, Justice Stephen Breyer noted a remarkable fact from a report by the British parliament's House of Lords: The Netherlands, which has allowed assisted suicide and euthanasia for years, had only three hospices nationwide, while Great Britian, which bans these practices, had 185 hospices. He had placed his finger on one of the most insidious effects of legalization: Once the quick and easy solution of assisted suicide is accepted in a society, doctors lose the incentive to pursue more difficult but life-affirming ways of truly caring for patients close to death.
The converse is also true: prohibiting assisted suicide sets a clear limit to doctors' options so they can commit themselves to the challenges of accompanying patients through their last days. As one physician said after years practicing hospice medicine: Only because I knew that I could not and would not kill my patients was I able to enter most fully and intimately into caring for them as they lay dying (quoted in Leon Kass, Why Doctors Must Not Kill, Commonweal, September, 1992, p.9).
The assisted suicide movement is willing to discredit modern pain control to advance its own cause. Euthanasia advocates know that when they equate assisted suicide and modern pain management, they are not just elevating the status of assisted suicide - among people who oppose direct killing of the innocent, they are undermining good pain control. They do not seem to care that their arguments will make doctors and patients more distrustful of legitimate practices that can truly help people live with dignity in their last days.
But strong voices are being raised to make sure they do not get away with this. In an April 1997 report on constitutional arguments about assisted suicide, the prestigious New York State Task Force on Life and the Law urged people on all sides of the assisted suicide issue to keep important distincitons clear. Noting the many physicians would sooner give up their allegiance to adequate pain control than their opposition to assisted suicide and euthanasia, the Task Force warned that characterizing the provision of pain relief as a form of euthanasia may well lead to an increase in needless suffering at the end of life.
This warning is even being raised by some who do not oppose physician- assisted suicide in principle. Clinicians must believe, to some degree, in a form of the principle of double effect in order to provide optimal symptom relief at the end of life, writes Dr. Howard Brody in the April 1998 Minnesota Law Review. Dr. Brody does not oppose assisted suicide in all cases, but he knows that many doctors do - and he knows they will not practice good palliative care if it is seen as tantamount to euthanasia. A serious assault on the logic of the principle of double effect, he writes, could do major violence to the (already reluctant and ill-informed) commitment of most physicians to the goals of palliative care and hospice.
It is startling that a movement ostensibly dedicated to the well-being of dying patients risks undermining their care to advance its political goal. What can the Hemlock Society say in its defense? That any such adverse effects on patients are only an unintended side-effect?
In short, pain control and other elements of palliative care must be clearly distinguished from intentional killing of patients. In trying to blur this distinction, euthanasia advocates only show their own indifference to the goal of promoting better care for dying patients.
In logic and in practice, two very different paths lie before the medical profession and our society: What Pope John Paul II has called the false mercy of assisted suicide and euthanasia, and the the way of love and true mercy that dedicates us to compassionate care The Gospel of Life, No.66-67). It is literally a choice between death and life.
Mr. Doerflinger is Associate Director for Policy Development, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Dr. Gomez is Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia Health System and Medical Director of its Palliative Care Program.
Before I left my last parish, I counted how many sacraments I had celebrated. I found that I had baptized 494 people in ten years - most of the pint-sized variety. I wonder how many of these discovered (or will discover) their vocation? If you are baptized then you have a calling. Your primary calling is "to know, love, and serve God." Your secondary calling requires a spirit of asking and listening in prayer.
We celebrate National Vocation Week starting this Sunday. It challenges us to look at how we are living our own vocation. It reminds us that we can be instruments of God's call to others. Who among us will serve as a priest, deacon, sister, or brother in the 21st Century? Pray for vocations. Encourage vocations. Invite others to consider a religious vocation. Your voice, if you humbly offer it to the Lord, might be the voice that they hear as Him calling!
Father Murphy
