Posts Tagged ‘dying’

Secrets of the dying

Thursday, July 6th, 2023
Secrets of the dying

If there’s one patient I’ll always remember with special fondness, it’s Ron. Ron was in his late 80s, a bushman who valued his independence. He wouldn’t let Hospice visit him at home because he didn’t want the neighbours to know he was sick. But he did agree to me visiting him at the pub, so Read more

Something different

Thursday, September 1st, 2022
synod

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s saga The Lord of the Rings Treebeard the Ent (a tree herder) tells the hobbits Merry and Pippin of the estrangement of the Ents and Entwives. Their differing views of happiness had moved them farther and farther apart until they lost all contact with each other to the loss of both since Read more

Becoming through dying

Thursday, September 26th, 2019

Perhaps someone very dear to you has already died, and you know the pain of losing them. Our Christian faith teaches that through our dying, “life is changed, not ended”. Not only that: it teaches that “… all the good fruits of human nature, and all the good fruits of human enterprise, we shall find Read more

A doctor and medical ethicist argues life after 75 is not worth living

Thursday, August 29th, 2019

In October 2014, Ezekiel Emanuel published an essay in the Atlantic called “Why I Hope to Die at 75.” Because Emanuel is a medical doctor and chair of the University of Pennsylvania’s department of medical ethics and health policy, as well as a chief architect of Obamacare, the article stirred enormous controversy. Emanuel vowed to Read more

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote the book on grief and dying, then found herself stuck in one of her five stages

Thursday, August 1st, 2019

It’s 50 years since Swiss-born pioneer in death studies Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote her classic text, On Death and Dying. The book introduced readers to the “five stages of grief” model she had developed to explain how people cope with death. The five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Then in 1995, following a Read more

What should I know about dying with cancer?

Thursday, March 1st, 2018
cancer

For all the world’s teachings on death and dying, the patient who doesn’t lament it for one reason or another is rare. Some people are unprepared to die. Others are worried about those left behind. Some are angry. Many are frightened. Not everyone is hungry for more life, but almost everyone at some point feels Read more

Analysis of the assisted dying debate

Monday, September 25th, 2017

Dying and death is not a new phenomenon: we have always become ill, suffered, were going to die and someone else could have killed us. So why now, at the beginning of the 21st century, after prohibiting euthanasia for thousands of years and when we can do so much more to relieve suffering than in Read more

600 year-old teachings on dying updated

Monday, July 3rd, 2017

An anonymous Dominican friar’s 600 year-old teachings on the Art of Dying have been updated and translated onto a website. The update includes animations, video interviews with experts and priests, and explanations of various aspects of preparing well for death as a Catholic. “Most people have an instinctive fear of death, but many also have Read more

Will this be our last Holy Week?

Monday, April 10th, 2017

Is Holy Week really worth the effort? If you talk to pastors, liturgists, choir directors, leaders of RCIA, etc., Holy Week is a time of frenetic activity, the culmination of much planning and lack of planning, and somehow—at least sometimes—inspiring. And then…? Well, a few weeks of lilies and extra “Alleluias!” and then back to Read more

Pope Francis: letter to a dying girl

Friday, December 9th, 2016

ROME-On the night of October 11, 1962, thousands of people made their way to St. Peter’s Square to celebrate the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, called for by St. Pope John XXIII. Unable to ignore the crowd, and before “off-the-cuff” remarks were simply what popes did, he improvised the most famous speech of his Read more