From Sea to Shining Sea

Give the king your justice, O God,

and your righteousness to a king’s son.

May he judge your people with righteousness,

and your poor with justice.

May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,

and the hills, in righteousness.

May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,

give deliverance to the needy,

and crush the oppressor.

May he live while the sun endures,

and as long as the moon, throughout all generations.

May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass,

like showers that water the earth.

In his days may righteousness flourish

and peace abound, until the moon is no more.

May he have dominion from sea to sea,

and from the River to the ends of the earth…

For he delivers the needy when they call,

the poor and those who have no helper.

He has pity on the weak and the needy,

and saves the lives of the needy.

From oppression and violence he redeems their life;

and precious is their blood in his sight…

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,

who alone does wondrous things.

Blessed be his glorious name forever;

may his glory fill the whole earth.

Amen and Amen.

Psalm 72

Reflection – Well, this is not going to be an easy blog post to write. This psalm has a profound significance, both in its own right—it is one of the great messianic psalms heralding the king who will establish righteousness on the earth—and for me as a Canadian.

The official motto of Canada is ‘from sea to sea’, and Canada is formally known as the ‘Dominion’ of Canada, precisely quoting from this very psalm: ‘May he have dominion from sea to sea.’ Canada, my beloved home country, is in its historical formation a Christian nation—this is not a matter of opinion, nor is it a political statement about any issue before us today. It is a matter of plain fact. 

And Psalm 72 is right at the heart of this Christian historical sensibility of Canada—pity on the weak and the needy, redemption from oppression and violence, care for the poor and those who have no helper.

I am ashamed of my country this week. The government of Canada, admittedly pressed to do so by the Supreme Court of Canada, is forcing through an aggressive law not simply allowing physician assisted death (assisted suicide, truly, or euthanasia), but forcing health care providers to provide it, even if in conscience they cannot.

The poor and the needy, the vulnerable, the suffering—all of these will be given not compassion and care and protection, but death. We can dress it all up in fine words about mercy and relief of suffering, but it is all a load of nonsense in the end—we are going to be killing people when they are at their most needy and vulnerable. As we have done to the unwanted unborn for decades now, so we will do to the unwanted elderly and disabled.

Oh, Canada, my home and native land… may God have mercy on us.

The process by which the bill was passed was ugly in itself. Our Prime Minister actually became physically violent at one point on the floor of the House of Commons and assaulted an opposition member. I wish I was exaggerating about that, but that is what happened, by any normal legal or moral standard or meaning of words. And… there was nothing, in terms of consequences or even widespread concern. Apparently, that is what democracy looks like, in Canada, in 2016.

I fear we are devolving into a thugocracy, led by the man with the great hair, the one-armed pushups, and the winning smile.

So my heart is a bit sore as I write this blog post about Psalm 72, our ‘national psalm’, if you will. The one thing I do know is that, in this year 2016 when so many nations are faced with leaders or prospective leaders (hello, my American readers and friends!) who appall us or frighten us, we are called to know that there is one Messiah alone who delivers justice and mercy to the poor and the weak, who establishes the world in right judgment and good order. And we know His Name, the name above all other names.

As all the other kings of the earth fail us, as they are failing us, pretty much without exception across the face of the globe, let’s put all our faith and hope in He who endures like the sun, falls from heaven like the rain. May His name be blessed forever and ever. Amen. Amen.

A Psalm Against Euthanasia

In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame.

In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;

Incline your ear to me and save me…

For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.

Upon you I have leaned from my birth;

It was you who took me from my mother’s womb.

My praise is continually of you…

So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me,

until I proclaim your might to all the generations to come.

Your power and your righteousness, O God, reach the high heavens.

You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?

You who have made me see many troubles and calamities

will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again.

You will increase my honor, and comfort me once again.

I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God;

I will sing praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel…

Psalm 71

Reflection – This is really less than half of Psalm 71, as you can see from all the ellipses (…). The parts I omitted are beautiful, actually, but are typical psalm sentiments that we have covered in this series many times—cries for help in distress and acclamations of praise and trust in God.

What is unique in this psalm is the reference to old age and gray hairs, and it is this I would like to reflect on. In psalters and breviaries this psalm is often giving the title ‘a psalm for old age’, and so it is. It is a grand teaching on how to grow old and what spiritual attitudes to bring into the latter years of life.

The key attitude here is, simply, steadfastness. The psalmist has known and served the Lord since his youth; he intends to continue to serve the Lord until his death. God has been his sure help since birth; he trusts that this will be the case until the end.

And even beyond death. This reference to the depths of the earth and being brought up again is quite telling. It could be a metaphorical reference to being raised up from the lowest position possible—when we say we are down in the dumps we do not literally mean that we are hanging out at a landfill site, right?

But this ‘depths of the earth’ is, literally, a reference to Sheol, to the place of the dead. And this psalm could reflect an early dawning awareness in Judaism that even death is not the end of YHWH’s fidelity to them, nor to the power of his steadfast love, his hesed for his people.

At any rate, whether in its original Jewish context it was metaphorical or literal, Jesus Christ has taught us to pray this psalm literally, for He Himself came back from the depths of the earth and in Him we all have the hope of being raised up even from death.

And this is the core attitude that we are meant to carry into old age and the decline of the body, the gradual diminishing and ending of all our earthly hopes and dreams. As the curtain slowly comes down on all these things—hopes of health, well being, the vigor and energy of youth that at least seems to make all things possible—we are meant to have a flourishing of theological hope, hope in God, hope that even as our humanity is exhausted the divine is anything but.

In our current Canadian climate of euthanasia, where the best thing we can seemingly think to offer an elderly and sick person is a lethal injection, this psalm and the spiritual attitudes within it take on deeper importance yet. It is so crucial for the elderly that as they experience the breakdown of their bodies and all that goes with that—chronic pain, weakness, and the emotional distress that naturally accompanies all of this—that they do not allow our increasingly cold, utilitarian, heartless society to rob them of the faith, hope, and love that will carry them over the threshold of death into the arms of God where all are made new.

So let us pray this psalm, too, we who are not old yet, in solidarity with our elder brothers and sisters, and let us be vigilant that we do not let society’s ethos and norms poison our minds in this matter. God is faithful, and He desires us to walk faithfully with Him until the very end of our life, so that His steadfast love may raise us up in the next one.

Let's Talk About Euthanasia

Well, judging from the 'Most Popular Posts' thingy on the right margin of the blog, my new series on 'Gnarly Questions' has immediately proven to be a hit, at least by the standards of this small blog. So let's carry on with it, and talk about one of the gnarliest of the gnarly questions of our day, euthanasia.

So what I have to say today builds on last week's blog post on the morality of suicide. If suicide itself is not understood to be a grave moral wrong, of course none of the Church's specific teaching on euthanasia makes any sense. If it is morally right to kill ourselves in other circumstances, there is no possible reason why it would be morally wrong to ask a doctor to give us a lethal injection.

I cannot possibly give the full and very nuanced Church teaching on this matter in one blog post. The Church's Declaration on Euthanasia from 1980 is still the authoritative teaching on the matter.

Essentially, we must take no direct action to end a person's life due to their being in a condition of terminal illness or chronic suffering. If the person asks us to do so and we comply, we are formally cooperating in the sin of suicide; if they have not asked us to do it and we do it nonetheless, we have committed the sin of murder.

There are nuances in this teaching that are important and have direct application to the real on-the-ground situations any one of us can come across in our lives. The Church does not hold to the ethic of vitalism, that is, the idea that life is to be preserved and prolonged for as long as possible, no matter what the cost to the person.

This makes no sense in the context of our larger vision of human life, in which this world and state of being is not our final goal. We must not take any step that would directly kill ourselves or another, but we are under no obligation to fight death to the last possible moment.

And so it is not euthanasia, not remotely, to decide to suspend medical treatments in certain circumstances. The Church currently uses the language of benefit vs. burden as a useful metric in making these decisions. If a treatment being proposed will yield little benefit for a person but is highly burdensome, then it is a perfectly moral decision for the person, or whoever they have delegated to make such decisions for them if they are incapacitated, to refuse that treatment. I am loathe to start going into specific examples, as this is an area where each situation has to be evaluated on its own merits and there are very few blanket statements that can be made.

It is also not euthanasia in any way, shape, or form, to give a person adequate pain medication to reduce their suffering. This is the case even when the dose of pain medication being given will indeed shorten the person's life by, say, compromising their respiratory system. The intent is what counts in these things--what is intended is to manage the person's pain, not to end their life. The proof of that intent would be that if there was some other way to manage the pain without the life-shortening effect, that method would be taken.

It is not euthanasia to remove artificial respiration when it has become clear that the person is not going to recover from, say, a massive aneurysm or other catastrophic event that has prevented them from even breathing on their own. That is allowing someone to die when that is what in fact they are doing; it is not deliberately causing their death by a positive action.

It is not euthanasia, even, in certain and very specific terminal conditions, to cease giving a person food and water. There is a point in the dying process when the body itself becomes unable to metabolize food and even, at the very end, hydration. At that point to force nutrition into a person is not actually 'feeding' them (since their body cannot absorb the nutrients), and in fact increases their suffering. On the other hand, to withdraw food and water in other circumstances is most definitely euthanasia, since the person has not yet entered that terminal phase of their illness, and their body does indeed want and can absorb food and water.

I go into all these things because it is confusing, otherwise. And in that confusion, the actual euthanasia--actually giving the person a lethal injection intended to kill them--can look like some of these other things. But it is radically different, and we must keep it clear. Choosing to let death happen when a person is actually dying is an entirely different thing than killing the person directly. One is a moral and humane thing to do; the other is a grave evil to be rejected.

Any questions? Fire away in the comments or on my Facebook page, and I will do my best to answer them.

Let's Talk About Suicide

Ooh, boy. Well, when I began this new column ‘Gnarly Questions’ last week, I wasn’t quite sure what I would be writing about this week. So why am I writing about suicide this week?

Well, on a small personal note, we received word this week that an old friend of MH for many years took her own life this week. So the subject is much on all of our minds here, obviously with a terrible sorrow for all who loved this person, myself included. So I apologize in advance if I bring a level of emotion to this blog post that I normally try to keep in check.

Actually, no, I don’t apologize for that. Too often we handle the topic of suicide with kid gloves and in consequence are not able to say hard things that need to be said about it, out of a misguided sense of compassion for its victims and its survivors. And I for one am sick of having to tip-toe around the subject in that way.

All the more so because suicide is one of the big topics of our day as well, in Canada at least, and I certainly would have gotten around to it as part of this series.

So let us begin by saying what so often is left unsaid in our discussion of the subject. Namely, suicide is a gravely evil act. It is one of the most evil things a person can do, not only because it involves the taking of a life, but because by the very act of committing suicide a person leaves themselves no chance to repent; it is literally the last choice the person makes, and it is a gravely evil one.

This does not mean that all people who commit suicide go to hell. Of course not, and anyone who thinks the Church says that is wildly deficient in their catechesis. The objective grave evil of the act does not necessarily translate into subjective guilt borne by the person, which depends on their freedom and knowledge. With suicide in particular, people more often than not kill themselves when the balance of their mind is disturbed and they are simply not thinking clearly. We draw a curtain over the whole question of subjective guilt and the state of the person’s soul, leaving that to God who alone can judge the living and the dead, and we pray for His mercy upon all.

But we need to do that, because (let me repeat myself) suicide is a horribly evil thing to do. Our lives are not our own—this is the key thing. Our lives belong to God, and it is for God and God alone to determine the manner and time of our deaths. I realize that for non-believers that is meaningless tripe; I am addressing this blog post to believers.

We have no right to commit suicide. We have no right to dispose of our lives when we see fit. It is an act of arrogating to ourselves the most sacred thing that belongs to God alone, and it is a wicked, wicked thing to do, even if psychic pain and a host of psychological factors mitigate or wholly remove the guilt of the one who does it.

I say this with some force for two reasons. First, it is not said often enough, generally because we are all aware of the terrible suffering and grief those left behind suffer from and do not wish to make it any worse. But by never coming out and saying flatly that suicide is a terribly wrong choice, we run the risk of implying that it is really not so wrong, really quite an understandable decision in this or that circumstance. And in that, we risk being complicit in the deaths of the suicidal.

But most importantly, physician-assisted suicide is coming to Canada whether we like it or not, and it is time for Catholics and all people to form their consciences properly. Suicide is evil—get it straight. It is an evil thing to do, so don’t do it. Do not end your life by committing one of the most evil actions a person can perform. Don’t go to God like that, please.

And the Canadian government, the Prime Minister and his cabinet members, in proposing and enacting this legislation (and let’s be realistic, they are going to push it through no matter what anyone says about it), are doing a wicked, wicked thing. May God have mercy on their souls.

Suicide will become the order of the day in Canadian hospitals. For people who are vulnerable—who are in some physical pain, who are afraid, who are worried about burdening their families, who are depressed in the face of a terminal prognosis—a kindly doctor will show up at their bedside and offer to end it all right now with one injection. It will all be couched in the language of comfort and mercy.

It will be a preying on the weakest and the most vulnerable members of the human community, at their hour of greatest desolation, to tempt them to do something that is monstrously evil that they will have no opportunity to repent of. Rather than accompanying a dying person through the dying process, surrounding them with the love and care of the community, doing everything possible to alleviate their pain, communicating to them with every small act of kindness and service we give them that their life is precious, that they are the most important person in the world right now, that we love them and will not abandon them no matter how hard it gets at the end… instead, we will just show up at their bedside, essentially tell them that the parts of their lives that were worth living are over now, and wouldn’t they rather just kill themselves. This is a moral evil that rises to the level of the demonic, to be perfectly frank, and I will not back down from that strong language.

Look, I know and you know it’s going to be legal in Canada. It’s going to happen and we can’t stop it, seemingly. But we can at least fight it, when it arrives at our own bedsides and the bedsides of the ones we love. We can tell the merchants of death to get the hell away from us and let us die like children of God, uniting our sufferings with Christ and bearing the gift and burden of life until its natural God-given end.

I am writing this blog post with one purpose and one purpose only: to dissuade even one person from choosing suicide in the face of illness, pain, and terminal illness. If I have succeeded in doing that, not only this blog post but my entire five years of blogging will have been worthwhile.

I will write more next week about specific issues around euthanasia proper—for now let us establish that suicide itself is a grave evil and must be resisted at all times. Our lives belong to God; we must not kill ourselves.

The Enemies At The Sickbed

 Blessed is the one who considers the poor!

 In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him;

 the Lord protects him and keeps him alive;

he is called blessed in the land;

you do not give him up to the will of his enemies.

 The Lord sustains him on his sickbed;

in his illness you restore him to full health.

 As for me, I said, “O Lord, be gracious to me;

 heal me, for I have sinned against you!”

 My enemies say of me in malice,

“When will he die, and his name perish?”

 And when one comes to see me, he utters empty words,

while his heart gathers iniquity;

when he goes out, he tells it abroad.

 All who hate me whisper together about me;

they imagine the worst for me.

 They say, “A deadly thing is poured out on him;

he will not rise again from where he lies.”

 Even my close friend in whom I trusted,

who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.

 But you, O Lord, be gracious to me,

and raise me up, that I may repay them!

 By this I know that you delight in me:

my enemy will not shout in triumph over me.

 But you have upheld me because of my integrity,

and set me in your presence forever.

 Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,

from everlasting to everlasting!

Amen and Amen

Psalm 41

Reflection – This psalm is entitled, often, in psalters and breviaries ‘a psalm in time of sickness.’ That may well be; as usual, there is more going on here than just someone with a tummy ache or a bad back. Most of us do not, at least in any visible way, have our ‘enemies’ gather around our sickbed to taunt us and lift their heels against us.

With all respect, I do sometimes wonder at the world the psalmists lived in – they certainly seem to be surrounded by a whole lot of not nice people. On the relatively rare occasions when I am sick, I get surrounded not by people shouting in triumph over me, but by people bringing me chicken soup and the like.

That being said… on the other hand this is exactly what happens to us when we are weak and vulnerable, failing and frail in life. It Is maybe not human enemies who surround us with taunts and gibes, but serious illness is a time of spiritual peril and temptation. Chronic pain and long protracted weakness leave a person prey to all sorts of vicious spiritual attacks: “Just give up… what good is your life… you are accursed… lie down and die…” And so on and so forth. At times it may be our own diseased thought processes; at times it may genuinely be attacks from the one true Enemy of humanity.

One of the great effects of the Sacrament of the Sick is that it unites the suffering one to Christ in his or her illness, and so does exactly what this psalm says, pours out the graciousness of God to the person so that this Enemy may not shout in triumph over them.

At the same time, this psalm speaks to just how evil the whole euthanasia movement is. Call it assisted suicide or whatever—it is euthanasia. Sickness is a time of temptation and spiritual struggle. 

The dying process is fraught with terrible battles against despair, against all sorts of tragic lamentations and desperate combat against not just physical death but the deeper spiritual death—the death of faith, the death of hope, the death of love.

To have the doctor who is supposed to be caring for you standing over you with a needle saying constantly in the midst of these battles “We can end this all now, you know!” is pure evil, even if the intentions are in fact kindly. To have the government—which let us not forget means you and I—standing at the bedside of the person saying “Hey, why don’t you just kill yourself?” is simply wicked.

So perhaps this psalm is not so remote and odd after all. We are surrounded by spiritual enemies in our sicknesses, and now more and more are surrounded by human enemies in (alas!) the members of the very profession who are supposed to be helping us and the society who is supposed to cherish us support us.

So in the light of that, let us pray for all the sick and turn to God in our own ailments, that he deliver us all from evil and raise us up in the sight of our foes. Amen.