Denver Catholic

14 MAY 23-29, 2015 | DENVER CATHOLIC Perspectives T he 21st-century Church owes a lot to 20th-century German Catholicism: for its generosity to Catholics in the Third World; for the witness of martyrs like Alfred Delp, Bernhard Licht- enberg, and Edith Stein; for its contri- butions to Biblical studies, systematic and moral theology, liturgical renewal, and Catholic social doctrine, through which German Catholicism played a leading role in Vatican II's eƒ orts to renew Catholic witness for the third millennium. At the Council, more than the Rhine fl owed into the Tiber; let's not forget the Seine, the Meuse, the Potomac, and the Vis- tula. But the Rhine's fl ow was strong. Which simply intensifi es the shock on reading the German bishops' report to the Vatican in preparation for this coming October's synod. One of my correspondents deemed it a de facto declaration of schism. I read it as an unintentional cri du coeur: a confession of catechetical disaster and pastoral failure on a nationwide scale, to which the German episcopate has no response save to urge others down the path that has led Catholicism in Germany into profound incoherence. When one tries to discuss this catastrophe with senior German churchmen, one rarely fi nds, these days, a sobered openness, born of the recog- nition that something has gone terribly wrong and that another approach to evangelization and catechesis must be found—an "All-In Catholicism" rooted in the joy of the Gospel preached and lived in its full integrity. Rather, what you often fi nd is a stubborn dou- bling-down. "You don't understand our situation" is the antiphon, typically spoken with some vehemence. Yet is it really the case that we obtuse non- Germans don't understand? The statistics on German Catholic practice— more accurately, the lack thereof—are not pontifi cal secrets. Those statistics are embodied by what visitors observe in German cities on Sunday: largely empty churches. Now comes this report for the synod, which suggests that, on matters of marriage, the family, the morality of human love, and the things that make for genuine happiness, German Catholic thinking is virtually indistinguishable from that of non-believers. And still the German episcopate suggests that more dumbing down of Catholic doctrine and practice is the answer, now on a global scale. It's quite remarkable. And it will certainly be remarked upon, and not favorably, in Rome in October. In October 2001, I had an engaging, two-hour conversation with Cardinal Karl Lehmann, now one of the grand old men of the German hierarchy. We discussed the crisis of belief throughout Europe (and Europe's related demo- graphic meltdown) at length. Then the cardinal oƒ ered me a copy of his newest book, "Now Is the Time to Think of God." I must say I found the title ... striking. I knew he intended it as a challenge to the regnant secularism of the time, but you had to wonder: What else had this dis- tinguished scholar, and his colleagues at the higher altitudes of German theology, been speaking about, these many years? To make a very long story short, they had often been speaking-about- speaking-about- God: that is, they'd been chasing their tails in trying to respond to the crisis of belief in late modernity. And in doing so, they'd gotten stuck inside what Polish philos- opher Wojciech Chudy, an intellectual great-grandson of John Paul II, called the post-Kantian "trap of refl ection:" thinking-about-thinking-about- thinking, rather than thinking about reality—in this case, the Gospel and its truths. Less elegantly, I'd describe Chudy's "trap of refl ection" as the quicksand pit of a subjectivism become self-absorption, from which it's hard to extract oneself and answer the Master's call, "Come, follow me." The German Catholic crisis is not primarily institutional; the Catholic Church is Germany's second-largest employer and its institutions are robust. The crisis is one of faith. German Catholicism is in crisis because German Catholics have not embraced the Lord Jesus and his Gospel with passion, con- viction and joy, and are seeking their happiness elsewhere. That's sad; that's tragic; that's dispiriting. But it's also nothing to be commended as a model for others, except as a cautionary tale about the eƒ ects of sur- rendering to the spirit of the age. The Catholic Church's German crisis George Weigel is a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. The Catholic Diž erence GEORGE WEIGEL M ore than 20 years ago, Dr. David Eddy, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Associa- tion, described how his mother, though not suƒ ering from a terminal illness, chose to end her life through VSED (vol- untarily stopping eating and drinking). She was "very independent, very self-suf- fi cient, and very content." When she began to be a¹ icted by various ailments, including rectal prolapse, she talked with her physician-son about "how she could end her life gracefully." When she asked him, "Can I stop eating?", he told her that if it was really her intention to end her life, she could also stop drinking since, "without water, no one, not even the healthiest, can live more than a few days." After a family bash celebrating her 85th birthday, she "relished her last piece of chocolate, and then stopped eating and drinking." She died of dehydration six days later, with her son arranging for pain medications to be administered during her fi nal days and hours. Choosing not to eat or drink can be packaged as a noble and well-inten- tioned way to avoid intense pain and suƒ ering, but VSED ultimately rep- resents a fl awed 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. We have a moral duty to preserve and pro- tect our life and to use ordinary means of doing so. Suicide, even by starvation and dehydration, is still suicide and is never morally acceptable. For some critically-ill patients, contin- ued attempts to ingest food and liquids may cause signifi cant complications, including severe nausea, vomiting, or complex problems with elimination. Such patients may fi nd themselves eƒ ec- tively incapable of eating or drinking. This is not VSED, but a direct manifes- tation of their advanced disease state, and does not raise any of the ethical con- cerns associated with VSED. As disease or severe illness advances, and a patient draws near to death, various bodily systems may begin to fail, and a natural decrease in appetite can occur. This is also diƒ erent from a voluntary decision to stop eating and drinking—VSED refers specifi cally to a conscious, elective decision on the part of a patient not to eat or drink when eating and drinking would be anticipated to provide benefi t to them without undue burdens. As people are dying, the real evil that often needs to be quelled or extinguished is pain, and severe pain is properly addressed by non-suicidal means, that is to say, through eƒ ective pain manage- ment and palliative care strategies. Some have sought to suggest that patients who choose VSED may feel less pain because the nervous system becomes dulled and the body may end up releasing chemicals which provide natural analgesia or pain relief: "What my patients have told me over the last 25 years is that when they stop eating and drinking, there's nothing unpleasant about it -- in fact, it can be quite blissful and euphoric," said Dr. Perry G. Fine, vice president of medical aƒ airs at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization in Arlington, Va. "It's a very smooth, graceful and elegant way to go." Such claims, however, remain highly controversial and strain credulity. Dehydration and starvation constitute a form of assault against the integrity of the body and the whole organism, and if the body reacts by releasing chemicals, this is a form of "shock" response to an escalating traumatic situation. As noted for Dr. Eddy's mother, pain medications were required to control the signifi cant suƒ ering and discomfort that would otherwise have ensued from her dehy- dration and starvation. Even those who promote VSED advo- cate uniformly for concurrent pain control. In fact, Helga Kuhse, a well- known advocate of assisted suicide, once argued that when people see how painful a death by starvation and dehy- dration really is, then, "in the patient's best interest," they will soon come to accept active euthanasia through, for example, a lethal injection. By its nature, VSED appears to be defi ned by the intent to cause death by forgoing the most basic requirements to conserve human life. Intention- ally engaging in such damaging and self-destructive behaviors, by foisting dehydration and starvation onto our mortal frames so as to shutter our earthly existence, can never represent an ordered kind of human choice. What is VSED and why should it matter to us? Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., serves as director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, www.ncbcenter.org. Making Sense of Bioethics FATHER TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK, PH.D.

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