Careful attention to pain management is of paramount importance in end-of-life care and supports both the patient and the family in a dignified way during the dying process.
Read MoreOur focus should be on the benefits and burdens of a proposed medical intervention rather than on trying to impose our own conclusion that certain individuals no longer have enough value or meaning in their lives.
Read MoreEach of our loving human gestures speaks volumes about the singular power of love to overcome fear, and to strengthen us in adversity.
Read MoreWhen we find ourselves nailed to our hospital bed, it can become an important personal moment for us to engage the possibility of a spiritual transformation opening before us.
Read MoreThis approach seeks to set up a particular supportive environment in which all the members of the family can receive the child following delivery, hold and name the newborn, and fully acknowledge his or her brief but meaningful life.
Read MoreFiguring out how to use these powerful pharmacological agents in an appropriate and ethical manner is urgent and imperative.
Read MoreWhile ending our life may seem to offer an ‘escape valve’ for the serious pressures and sufferings we face, we do well to consider the real effects of this choice both in this life, and in the life to come.
Read MoreChoosing not to eat or drink can be packaged as a noble and well-intentioned way to avoid intense pain and suffering, but VSED ultimately represents a flawed choice. It subtly draws us into the mistake of treating the objective good of our life as if it were an evil to be quelled or extinguished.
Read MoreYet in the face of a terminal medical diagnosis, it is not reasonable to let our fears dictate our choices; instead it behooves us to confront and resolve those fears without yielding to panic and without allowing unpleasant future scenarios to loom large in our imagination.
Read More…suffering can make us bitter or it can make us better, depending upon how we respond to it and use it to enter into deeper union with the Lord who suffered and died a hard death for us.
Read More…approaching our own mortality with a greater dose of realism helps us make better decisions about when to roll back the medical interventions and focus our energies on preparing for death.
Read More…euthanasia and assisted suicide are little more than ways of short-circuiting our human interrelatedness & interconnectedness, acts of violence on a basic level that cause great harm and disruption.
Read MoreGod permits our sufferings, offered up, to make an indelible mark in His work of Salvation. This transformation of the ‘uselessness’ of our suffering into something profoundly meaningful serves as a source of spiritual joy to those who enter into it.
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