Faithful Living, Faithful Dying: Anglican Reflections on End of Life Care - Softcover

End Of Life Task Force Of The Standing Commission On National Concerns; The Episcopal Church

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819218308 ISBN 13: 9780819218308

Verlag: Morehouse Publishing, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

An important examination of the theological, spiritual, and ethical issues surrounding death.

At the end of a life of faithfulness comes our dying. To approach it as faithfully as we have our living calls for some serious forethought. Because one of the simplest facts of life―that we all die―seems like the most complicated thing we do.

Not only have advances in
medical technology saved lives, but they also have prolonged death, and raise a
number ethical, moral, social, and theological issues. How far should we go to
sustain life? Is it right to withdraw artificial feeding from the dying? Is it
wrong to end the lives of those in pain? No matter who we are, dealing with
these sorts of choices near the end of life is difficult to do on our own.Faithful Living, Faithful
Dying: Anglican Reflections on End of Life Care brings together the wisdom of a
task force created by the 72nd General Convention of the Episcopal Church to
study what faithful living and faithful dying mean today. The task force’s
reflections, published for the first time in this book, assist individuals,
congregations, and the Church as a whole to disentangle the thicket of ethical,
theological, pastoral, and policy concerns.

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The Episcopal Church welcomes all who worship Jesus Christ and comprises 106 dioceses and one mission area across 22 countries or territories. The Episcopal Church is a member province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

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FAITHFUL LIVING FAITHFUL DYING

ANGLICAN REFLECTIONS

By Cynthia B. Cohen, Jan C. Heller, Bruce Jennings, E. F. Michael Morgan, David A. Scott, Timothy F. Sedgwick, David H. Smith

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2000 General Convention of the Episcopal Church
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8192-1830-8

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Theological and Ethical Understandings
Chapter 1. The Reality of Death
Chapter 2. God, Death, and Anglican Theology
Chapter 3. Moral Journey, Ethical Compass
Part II Faithful Responses
Chapter 4. Using Our Medical Powers Appropriately
Chapter 5. Making Responsible Treatment Choices
Chapter 6. Accepting, Caring, and Mourning
Chapter 7. Enriching the Church's Response
Chapter 8. Broadening the Conversation
Final Reflections
Appendix
1. Last Things: A Parish Resource for the Time of Death, St. Matthias 
Episcopal Church, Waukesha, Wisconsin
2. Memorial Garden, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Saratoga, California
3. Regulations and Conditions, St. Peter's Columbarium, St. Peter's 
Church, Conway, Arkansas
4. A Form f Prayer at a Time When Life-Sustaining Treatment Is Withdrawn, 
Committee on Medical Ethics, Diocese of Washington, Washington, D.C.
Members of End of Life Task Force

CHAPTER 1

THE REALITY OF DEATH

Death, for Christians, is understood not merely as an event that we must undergoat the end of life but also as an ever-present accompaniment to the story of ourlives. It is an integral part of life, a mystery to be contemplated as we live.Here we consider the awesome force of death, exploring the import of therealization that we will die for all of us, but especially for those within theAnglican tradition. We then turn to consider the significance of death as aspecific event in our lives. For Christians, the actual experience of death isreal, but not ultimate; it does not speak the last word about our humancondition. This exploration of the significance of death is not merely aphilosophical bypath or theological nicety but is forced upon us by the oftendifficult decisions—medical, ethical, personal, and spiritual—that we must makewhen death appears on the horizon. Therefore, the task force reflects here uponhow the Anglican perspective on the meaning of death can illuminate the concernsand realities that we face today near the end of life.

DEATH AS A PART OF LIFE

Throughout our lives, especially as we grow older, we are aware that someday wewill die. This awareness is not often conscious but lies just beneath thesurface, ready to emerge again and again. Many things can call it to mind. Thedeath of someone whom we know well and love reminds us that we, too, must die.The death of a person our own age makes us pause, abruptly bringing our ownmortality into focus. News headlines of a massacre, a plane crash, an epidemic,or an accident bring our awareness of the inevitability of our own death rushingto the fore. Even the change of the seasons reminds us that our lives, like alllife around us, are caught up in a cycle of birth, growth, decline, and death.Aging makes the reality of upcoming death even more vivid to us as time becomesetched in the lines on our skin. We feel our mortality in our bones and in ourdiscernibly diminishing capacities.

Thus, the awareness that someday we will die accompanies us throughout ourlives, waiting to step out of the shadows of our absorption in the activities ofdaily life. And, in the Christian understanding of death, this is not a badthing. We are taught by these recurring reminders of death to "number our days,"that is, to contemplate that our lives have a limit. We have but one life tolive and one life to offer. We can resist this awareness or we can consent toit. For Christians, the awareness of death can be a spiritual discipline, a partof the schooling that teaches us to mature in our faith. Indeed, within theAnglican tradition, a consciousness of the fact that we will die someday is anecessary accompaniment to faithful living.

Yet we receive little support from contemporary society for our Christianendeavor to face death in life. Our culture conspires against acknowledging itsinevitability. Death in our secular society typically provokes fear and denial,rather than contemplation and reflection. And so our society deals with death byevasions and lies. Advertisements abound for products promising to hide orremove the signs of aging. Older persons who are approaching death are concealedbehind the walls of institutions whose corridors we grace as little as commondecency allows. The words "died" and "death" do not pass our lips; we speakinstead of someone "passing away" or of "losing" those we love. We flee fromacknowledging the reality of death.

Even as our culture conceals death in a heavy cloak of silence, it is obsessedwith death. This is because it recognizes it as a power that is out of ourcontrol, one for which we have no effective response. To keep death at bay, wetreat it as if it is only a fantasy played out in wars in distant lands or afictional focus of entertainment for us in "gun em down" movies, killer videogames, and horror houses at Halloween. Death is, for us, an unmentionablesubject and yet a source of endless fascination. Our denial of its reality inmodern Western culture is, paradoxically, heightened by our refusal to let go ofit. Thus, death retains its terrible importance and meaning for us even as wepretend to ignore it.

Commentators have described our culture as "death-denying." Death and dying,this culture teaches, are unspoken terrors that will make their appearance atsome far-off time. Therefore, we need not think about them today. It has becomemore difficult to acknowledge explicitly the reality of death in our societybecause we press it into a medical model, reducing it to a merely biologicalproblem. Our culture has "assigned" such biological problems to medical expertswhose training has taught them to see decline and death as signs ofmalfunctioning, and finally nonfunctioning, organ systems. Thus, death becomesan untoward biological accident that medicine, with its technological prowess,must attempt to avert. In such ways, our society brackets our awareness of deathas an essential part of the story of our lives and makes it increasinglydifficult for us to have a "death of our own."

True, there has been a relatively recent movement in Western societies urging anincreased awareness of death. A drive toward consumer awareness is one piece ofthis movement. This drive is designed to help us protect ourselves fromexploitation at a particularly vulnerable moment in our lives—the time when wepurchase professional services related to dying and death. Such consumerprotection requires us to acknowledge at some level, no matter how far removed,that we will die. Another piece of this contemporary death awareness movement isfound in alternative, or holistic, medicine, a growing field that appears inpart to be a reaction to the dominant medical model of illness, dying, anddeath. The holistic approach, which views the person as a whole being of mind,body, and spirit,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Morehouse Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0819218308
• ISBN 13: 9780819218308
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 144
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar