I’ll admit what I should have said was it’s happening less and less and we are getting better at managing it the more we learn about it. I guess maybe there’d be less left to learn if we nudge the death goalpost nearer, so that’s a plus.
Must to nice to be able to judge the veracity of life itself sight-unseen. Establishing a mindset leaning in any direction is simply illogical. Every case is different.
Riiiiight. Timing really “is” everything now isn’t it? :rolleyes:
There’s lots of terms for killing people people. The sooner the better, I suppose then.
Let’s say I’m in the final stages of cancer. I can do another round of chemo and maybe get another month or so of living in extreme agony, or I can turn down the chemo, get doped up on fentanyl, and ride out my last days with a modicum of comfort and dignity.
If I choose the latter, who is “killing” me?
Yeah, killing is so execution-style. Maybe I should have been more secular with something like “invoking death?”
(cue ominous church organ)
That’s not an answer.
BeenJammin despises the Pope;
Says “Listen to him? Nuh-uh! Nope!”
His argument’s pap;
His writing is crap
This Doper is really a dope.
News article titles are notoriously imperfect approximations to the content of the articles. The Pope sent a message to a pontifical academy and an archbishop as well as to a confederation of medical associations meeting to discuss end-of-life issues.
Like it or not, about one of every six people in the world is Catholic. End-of-life medical care is indeed hugely important to patients and their families, and their decisions about it are often crucially influenced by religious belief and institutions. It makes no sense at all for the leader of the Catholic faith not to tell doctors, and the world in general, what Catholic doctrine is on these issues.
:dubious: Cite that problems due to excessive medical intervention in end-of-life care are in fact “happening less and less”? And who do you think are the “we” who end up “managing” these situations in reality?
When I was in the hospital with my dying mother almost exactly a year ago, after she had finally been able to talk the doctors into giving her the terminal morphine sedation that she wanted in preference to the constant pain and helplessness, I heard some real horror stories from the nurses about the prolonged agonies of some terminal patients due to treatments insisted on by well-meaning relatives who simply couldn’t bear to think that they might not be “doing everything that could be done”.
Families have a terrifying amount of power to prolong the suffering of the dying, because they’re not the ones feeling the physical pain, they’re reluctant to let go of their loved one, and they generally have a very minimal understanding of the medical facts. If some of those people are encouraged to think about these issues more carefully because of something the Pope said, then good for him.
In fact, has anyone posted here so far who isn’t an atheist?
And just a note on style. If you’re going to swear, fucking swear. “Goldangits” and “Dagnabbits” and “Tarnations” are for little kids.
Aw, consarnit!
That’s never been a Church position. A position of some Church members, yes; the official position, no.
Is that a joke? 
Stupid poster makes stupid thread.
Other posters call it stupid.
Stupid poster whines.
I foresee stupid poster not lasting very long. Oh how I wish I could change how certain posters’ names appeared. I’d have “Whataboutist Goatfucker”, “Proof Of De-Evolution”, “One-Liner Idiot”, and, now, “Stupid Poster”.
vBulletin, MAKE IT HAPPEN!
All you need is a short hop in the Not-That-Wayback Machine.
This is going well.
It sounds like you and I were going through almost the same thing at almost the same time. We had similar discussions with my father. He had deteriorated so much that he couldn’t even watch TV, since, as he told me, he couldn’t concentrate well enough to follow the story. This from a man who was always one of the smartest guys in the room. And on his last Saturday, he spent most of the day in agony because his cancer was interfering with his bladder, and trying to urinate was incredibly painful and difficult. What would be the point of expecting him to endure that any longer than necessary? The end result was no longer in doubt, it was just a matter of how much suffering he would undergo.
I’m one, but I was raised Catholic, and lots of my relatives still are. And as I posted earlier, exactly these issues caused some disruption for my mother at a time when she really didn’t need that added trouble. I could wish that the Pope had said this years ago, but at least now, maybe other families won’t have to worry as much about it.
I’ve never accepted the bullshit Catholic idea that positions pushed onto people by Church officials and adopted by the church in it’s endeavors and not condemned by higher church officials don’t count as a “Church position” just because the higher ups don’t explicitly endorse them. As far as I’m concerned, anything that Church officials do that isn’t at least as decried by the church as living life as a gay man counts as a Church position to me. When Catholics decide to stop claiming that the Pope speaks directly to God, I’ll cut them some slack on allowing difference of opinion for people, but God’s word is God’s word, you don’t get to hide behind technicalities.
I’m only socially Catholic any more, but I’ve know that extra-ordinary means to sustain life were not required for what seems like most of my life (and certainly the last 30 years or so).
Now, there may have been discussion as to what constitutes ‘extra-ordinary’, but certainly artificial respiration was not required (but allowed) by any authority I ever heard of.
This. It has never been (far as I know) any sort of “official policy” to use “heroic” or overzealous measures. It has always been intended to preserve life when possible, and to ease suffering at the very least. It was never meant to force the “maintenance” of vegetables and terminal people who want to refuse extreme measures (effectively life support for an empty husk).
The position was while suicide or deliberate euthanasia were frowned upon, knowing when to let go, was a kindness.
Some probably are mad they can’t talk Latin and burn heretics or witches anymore too 
“That’s ‘modern medicine.’ Advances that keep people alive who should have died a loooong time ago.”
The issue is doing everything that should be done, and the Pope’s policy is we should be doing less.
Of course, how much less, exactly what to leave out and when to or not to do something are trivial details best left up to the people who have struggled with this issue from time immemorial.
I really don’t understand how people don’t get this concept. Try this new term for it on for size: Church overreach. That’s a pretty simple summary of the new Catholic EOL medical position.
So does this apply to all clinically-induced suffering, or only that being endured by Catholics?