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Tag Archives: Pain and Suffering

Ordinary and Extraordinary Medical Care

12 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by Fr. Moore in Catholic Church, Catholic Obligations, Morality, Pro-Life

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End of Life Issues, Medical Ethics, Pain and Suffering

I just received the most recent edition of Ethics & Medics: A Commentary of the National Catholic Bioethics Center on Health Care and the Life Sciences (wow, they need to shorten that). It is a four page newsletter that comes out every month with various medical ethical issues being discussed. This month the issue in question is whether or not to deactivate someone’s pacemaker in given situations. The issue itself is not my reason for this post but instead information within the first article that I was not aware of beforehand, which has to do with ordinary and extraordinary means of medical care.

The distinction between ordinary and extraordinary does not take into account the entirety of a patient’s medical situation; it can only concern the relationship between a specific problem, its corresponding treatment, and that treatment’s effects.

Ethics & Medics, Nov. 2014, vol. 39, num. 11, page 2.

What this means is that you cannot combine all of a patient’s various and unrelated symptoms and say that any care given would therefore be extraordinary. For instance, the type of situation it discusses in the article is when someone has a serious and painful disease that would cause them to die if it were not for the fact that they had a pacemaker. But, the disease and the pacemaker are totally unrelated. Therefore, you cannot deactivate the pacemaker saying that it is extraordinary means of treatment because what it is treating is unrelated to that which is causing the severe pain. There could be other reasons in which the pacemaker could be viewed as extraordinary and therefore could be removed but it cannot be removed because of an unrelated illness – no matter how bad it may be.

But before anyone says, “The Catholic Church is so mean; why do they want people to suffer.” The Church does not want anyone to suffer but instead recognizes that suffering is a part of our experience in this life. In addition the Church does believe in and promote the use of medicines that can alleviate pain. Lastly, the Church does not allow euthanasia or anything else that could be done that would be for the express purpose of ending the patient’s life because she (the Church) recognizes that we are not the creators of our lives but instead the stewards of it. And, therefore, we are bound to protect our lives with the ordinary means that are available to us.

For more information on the subject you can go to §2278-9 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church or go to the USCCB document located here. (Helpful in particular is Part Five that starts on page 29 and especially §55-7 that starts on page 30.)

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The ‘Religion of Peace’

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by Fr. Moore in Forgiveness, Salvation

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forgiveness of enemies, Image of God, Loving our Neighbor, Pain and Suffering

For a few weeks now I have been planning to do a piece on Islam. And today, the anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attacks on this country, seems to be a good day to reflect on the so-called ‘religion of peace’ and what was done to the people of this country 13 years ago. (And which continues to be done today in other parts of the world.)

Let us first get one thing straight: I am not saying that there are no peaceful Muslims. I am sure some of them are. But I believe it to be a lie to call Islam a religion of peace. Now I would imagine, in our politically correct society, that there are many people who would take offense at my calling the 9/11 attacks an ‘Islamic terriost attack’. They would say that it was only the ‘extremists’ that performed the attacks. But, let us be real, it was an Islamic attack. To deny this would be to say that the people who perpetrated the attacks were not Muslim, which would be untrue. To this someone might respond, “Yes, but many members of the Mafia are Roman Catholic, and they are responsible for many horrible crimes as well.” That is true, but it is not their Catholic faith that motivates their evil deeds. In fact, the Church denounces any such evil deeds done by one of its members or any evil done by anyone else for that matter. On the other hand, the same cannot be said of the 9/11 attacks or any of the things going on in the Middle East at this time. The actions 13 years ago and the atrocities being committed right now are very much an outgrowth of the religion of Islam, which is evidenced by the fact that the terrorists are directly motivated by the teachings of Muhammad.

But most people don’t want to think critically about such things. They just want to believe what the media tells them over and over and over again – Islam is a religion of peace. It is not hard to discover how big a lie this is. Here are some examples of what I am talking about. (There is much more that can be found at the website located here.)

Quran (5:33) – “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement.”

Quran (8:12) – “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”

And that is not all. In total there are “at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.” (From the above mentioned website.) To this some might say, “Yes, but jihad is supposed to be understood as a spiritual struggle.” Good luck convincing the family of James Foley and countless others throughout Islam’s history of that particular bit of nonsense.

 

Now that is enough about the whole religion of peace nonsense. If you still believe in that then go and see what the teachings of Islam really say instead taking your opinion from the talking heads on TV.

My main purpose is not to show how bad Islam really is. Instead, my main purpose today is to call for forgiveness toward those Muslims who have done such evil things against others. This is a case of hate the sin but love the sinner. On days like today when we remember such senseless evil done to us we can very easily become upset and angry, even to the point of hatred for those who do such evil deeds. When this kind of evil is done against a person or group of people there are sometimes those who will say, “I can never forgive them for that.” But as Christians we cannot allow ourselves to fall into such a trap. Yes, what was done was very evil, but look at the evil that was done to Christ and what did He say from the Cross? “Father forgive them.”

We need to understand that by giving forgiveness we are not condoning the evil that is done agaist us. Instead, when we forgive others we are saying in effect, “What you did to me was wrong, but, I do not hold it against you.” And why should we do this? Well, for one, Jesus told us, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (Luke 6:27b-28, RSV-CE) And in addition He said “if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Those are very strong words which show us the importance of forgiving others. We must remember that we are all sinners in need of forgiveness, but if we do not give forgiveness to others, even to our worst enemies, then God will not forgive us either.

And why is this? Why does God require us to forgive and why did Jesus forgive His tormentors from the Cross? In fact, why did Jesus, the Son of God, die for us in the first place? Because each and every one of us, whether we be Muslim, Jew, Christian, atheist, or whatever, are made in the image and likeness of God and He desires all those who He has created to be with Him in Heaven.

And all of this brings up a final point. We should be concerned with those who are trapped within the religion of Islam. In our egalitarian “any religion is good as any other” mentality we do not understand what it means to be a Muslim. The people within it, especially the women, cannot just leave and join themselves to another religion if they feel so called. Muslims who dare to convert to Christianity are quite literally risking their lives because other Muslims, even their own family members, will kill them rather than let them leave Islam. Yes, the religion of Islam is a hateful, despotic, and even evil religion that has led to much suffering for centuries throughout the world. But those who are within it are still people in need of salvation and to carry around hatred in our hearts for them is equivalent to wishing them to hell. What we must do instead is forgive, pray for, and if possible, evangelize Muslims for the sake of their souls and our own.

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What We All Desire

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Fr. Moore in C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Thought for the Day

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Happiness, Pain and Suffering

The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose* an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis

*Note: It seems to me that “oppose” should instead be “pose as”, but I haven't been able to confirm this.

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Pain after Death?

11 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by Fr. Moore in C.S. Lewis, Death, Eternal Life, Salvation, Theodicy

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Pain and Suffering, Purgatory

It has been too long since I posted anything. Things have been very busy at the parish with the end of school, graduations, and now I am preparing something for a group of nuns I will be addressing today and tomorrow. (First time I have done this, by the way, so please pray that what I have prepared will be adequate.) I haven’t the time to write something original but I wanted to make some kind of post. Today’s selection is from Lewis. He asks many hard questions which would be good for us all to consider.

Lewis, grieving the death of his wife, Joy:

They tell me H. is happy now, they tell me she is at peace. What makes them so sure of this? I don’t mean that I fear the worst of all. Nearly her last words were, ‘I am at peace with God.’ She had not always been. And she never lied. And she wasn’t easily deceived, least of all, in her own favour. I don’t mean that. But why are they so sure that all anguish ends with death? More than half the Christian world, and millions in the East, believe otherwise. How do they know she is ‘at rest’? Why should the separation (if nothing else) which so agonizes the lover who is left behind be painless to the lover who departs?

‘Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God’s goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death as unendurably as before it.

Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’ Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn’t. He crucified Him.

A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis

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Fr. Moore

Fr. Moore

Parochial Vicar Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio, Texas FrMoore@truthwithboldness.com

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