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Watching a loved one suffer and die is painful beyond words. And that pain often clouds judgment, leading to confusion and doubt about what medical interventions are truly the most caring and appropriate. For 45 years I have been associated with The National Catholic Bioethics Center and have taught moral theology in two seminaries. I have given talks on care at the end of life, on advanced medical directives, and on a Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions when a patient becomes incompetent. Over the years, I also counseled individuals having to make difficult health care decisions. None of that, however, even begins to have the existential relevance when it is one’s own loved one who is suffering and dying.

All the academic work and intellectual formulations of moral principles can never truly prepare one for the intensely personal decisions that have to be made in the face of dying and death. But they do help. I write this within six months of the passing of my wife of 56 years, the mother of our nine children and grandmother of 36. Those are only numbers of course; data points that simply do not begin to speak to the drama and passion and love and heartache and joys knit together in so many lives and over so many years with my wife, our children’s mother and grandchildren’s Grandma.  But I write of it now, while the memory is still very fresh, to attest to the personal comfort I derived from a decades-old professional relationship with The National Catholic Bioethics Center.

Many years ago, the Center published its Catholic Guide to End-of-Life Decisions along with a model for an Advanced Medical Directive and designation of a Health Care Proxy. It was printed in English, Spanish, French and Polish. Literally tens of thousands have been distributed over the years. But suddenly what I had passed out at conferences and in classrooms for years became an actual aide to me personally! As my wife battled cancer for more than three years, the Center, quite independently of our personal situation, published a Guide to Palliative Care and Hospice and a book entitled The Art of Dying. I found myself distributing them and the Guide to End-of-Life Decisions to our nine children and their spouses, and to some of the older grandchildren so they themselves could find guidance and solace in the decisions my wife and I were making about her care.

But I am hardly the only one who has been helped by the guidance of the NCBC. One time I called a company about a delivery that had not arrived. After some time, the woman on the phone said, “Your name is familiar. Do you have anything to do with bioethics?” I said, “Yes. I am president of The National Catholic Bioethics Center.” After a moment of silence, she began to cry. She said, “When my father was dying, I called your Center for help. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for the guidance I received. It lifted such a burden from me with the difficult decisions I had to make! I felt like I was not alone, but the Church was there to help.”

Of the more than 2,000 consultations the Center receives annually, the topic most frequently raised is that of care for the dying. There are many misconceptions about the comfort measures that can legitimately be used to ease the suffering of those who are ill. The lack of a proper understanding can lead to anguish about decisions that have to be made or guilt over decisions that were made.

“Palliative care” refers to such comfort measures. The term is taken from the cloak (pallium) that the Roman soldier, St. Martin of Tours, cut in half to clothe a beggar. Sometimes comfort measures can indirectly and unintentionally hasten the dying process, sometimes they can lead to confusion and perhaps even unconsciousness in the patient. These foreseen, undesired effects of comfort care can be permitted as one provides help for the loved one. The advice I gave over the years drawn from the Catholic moral and pastoral tradition became embodied in my wife’s and my own response to her suffering, in my intense desire to help her in every way possible, and in the explanations and guidance provided to our children and grandchildren.

The NCBC can be a source of guidance drawn from the Catholic moral tradition. But it is therefore also a source of comfort when we have the assurance that our health care decisions are indeed morally sound and for the best of our loved one.