As euthanasia and assisted suicide are legalized in more jurisdictions throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world, one Catholic-focused ministry is promoting end-of-life resources that the group’s founder says will help Catholics finish their earthly journeys while remaining faithful.
Aging with Dignity, a nonprofit that for years has been promoting end-of-life support in line with church teaching, released “Finishing Life Faithfully,” a booklet that “makes complex end-of-life decisions easier.” The materials address basic questions on how to approach end-of-life topics such as pain management, feeding tubes and other matters surrounding death.
The document “summarizes the Catholic Church’s guidance on end-of-life decision-making and the ethical considerations involved and helps patients and families better understand these teachings and follow them,” the group said last month.
Jim Towey, the founder and CEO of Aging with Dignity who previously served as legal counsel to Mother Teresa, told CNA that he launched the nonprofit in 1996 “to give people a hopeful vision for end of life that helps them practice their faith and that doesn’t treat dying like it’s just a medical moment.”
For years Aging with Dignity has distributed its “Five Wishes” legal document, which helps Catholics and others “express (their) wishes ahead of a serious illness.” A form of what’s known as an “advanced directive,” Towey said it lets the faithful “address their personal, emotional and spiritual needs” before the final weeks and days of their lives.
The Five Wishes program has been immensely popular; the group has distributed more than 40 million copies of the guide in 33 languages. But, Towey said, “it needed a companion guide to help Catholics understand what the church teaches on feeding tubes, anointing of the sick, hospice and pain management.”
Towey said he spent all of last year working with various collaborators, including priests, to develop the guide. The group says the document offers “a positive vision of care at the end of life that contrasts with the euthanasia/assisted suicide movements.”
The guide provides information on the ethical questions that often surround end-of-life concerns. It notes, for instance, that Catholics “can take or increase pain medication to lessen suffering” even if such medication might hasten the onset of death, so long as “death is not willed as either an end or a means.”
Elsewhere it notes that Catholics are not “obliged to accept or continue every medical intervention available” and that waiving “disproportionate medical treatments” that promise “only a precarious or painful extension of life” is “not the equivalent of suicide or euthanasia.”
The organization distributes the materials through more than 5,000 distributing organizations, including health care providers, churches and employers. Individuals often request the documents to distribute to family or friends.
Both euthanasia and assisted suicide have been legalized in more jurisdictions throughout the U.S. and Western Europe. Assisted suicide is legal in nine U.S. states and under consideration in several more. Numerous countries, meanwhile, allow euthanasia and/or assisted suicide, including Canada, Belgium, Spain and several others.
Towey said when he founded the organization nearly 30 years ago, there were already warning signs on the horizon regarding those deadly procedures.
“What I saw back in 1996 were the clouds gathering in favor of assisted suicide,” he said. “Now the storms have begun.”
“We’re seeing more and more people, including Catholics, deceived by the arguments in favor of assisted suicide,” he said.
Both the advanced directive and the end-of-life guide have been touted by U.S. church leaders, including New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who described it as “grounded in the primacy of protecting God’s gift of life.”
Of the group’s end-of-life advocacy, Towey said: “We’re just getting started.”
“Assisted suicide isn’t the solution. Good end-of-life care and healthy family discussions are.”
