Bona Mors: A "Good Death"

Today we treat death in the same way the Victorians dealt with sex: we'd rather it didn't happen at all, but if it must, let it take place out of sight and with no mention of it in polite society.

The Catholic idea of the "bona mors" - a good death - is never discussed. We do use the term "euthanasia", which literally means the same in Greek as the Latin phrase, but we take it to mean the willful ending of a life that the person, or their representative, considers to be no longer useful. People argue passionately for the right to have a doctor administer a lethal injection, but they don't realize the implications of such an act.

What it means to those who wish to legalize it is that human life has become a commodity, not a gift. In such a view, people are valued because of their roles as producers and consumers. When both become irrelevant, as with the terminally ill, the severely disabled or the very old, then life itself is thought to be expendable. It is a utilitarian, heartless view of human beings. Catholics see it as part of a pervasive "culture of death" that now permeates society.

And the risk is that if society adopts such a viewpoint, those thought to be "useless mouths", as Hitler called the disabled, will be encouraged or compelled to end their own lives.  Chronically sick or elderly people may be made to feel guilty for living too long. Why should they take up space and resources, when they are no longer contributing anything measurable to society?

In some countries this may already be happening. There have been cases in Europe of people who are depressed, or suffering from a minor illness, asking for lethal injections, when with good medical and psychiatric care they could go on to enjoy happy lives.

How very sad.

This desperate situation is the result of 50 years of gradual erosion of religious and spiritual values in the West, so that huge masses of society are apathetic as to the purpose of their lives. If they think about it at all, it's in terms of those two roles: can they still produce anything? And can they consume - food, clothing, cars, houses, anything that advertisers attempt to sell us? Are they themselves still "marketable commodities" - young-looking, energetic, healthy? If not, away to the crematorium with them. Call Doctor Death.

Nobody now, except for Catholics and - as far as I know - Orthodox Christians and Jews contemplate death as a vital transition to a new life; the most important moment, in fact, of our entire earthly existence. All our lives lead up to this moment, and yet we banish it from consciousness and try to deny its reality with more and more consumption, plastic surgery, vitamin injections, and so on.

So what does a good death mean, to a religious person?

First of all, it means, as Gurdjieff said, not "dying like a dog". And that, of course, is exactly what the euthanasia lobby would like to see. We give our beloved pets lethal injections when they are suffering, so why not treat human beings in the same way? After all, we're only animals, aren't we?

To die like a dog meant, to G, dying without having fully lived. Without having become fully conscious; without having made the effort to transform our own being, and in so doing, to help the universe to evolve.

To a Catholic, the most important aspect of death is that it will present us before God, just as we are at the moment of our decease. Therefore, Catholics strive to ensure they will have a priest near at hand when their death is imminent, so that a confession may be made, the Eucharist taken, and the soul sent on its journey towards God in a state of peace and hope.

Throughout their lives, however, Catholics (and all Christians, until the Reformation) will have gone regularly to confession, have examined their conscience every day, and fed their soul on spiritual truths. In doing so, they will have fought against many temptations during their lifetime, and so when they die they can feel assured that they have fought a good fight, and that Christ will receive them.

I'm not arguing against pain relief, of course. In some cases, pain-killing injections may be needed of such strength they may endanger life. But in these circumstances, death is not the aim of the injection, but simply an unintended consequence, and I'm sure many people suffering from terminal diseases do die in this way. But what the euthanasia lobby is calling for is the right to ask for injections which have death as the main aim. And this is what is so appalling.

 Of course, a society which denies spiritual reality also denies the existence of an afterlife. Never mind that there are now many people, of whom I'm one, who've been privileged to attain a glimpse of this during our earthly lives. We have all undergone a profound transformation as a result, and have tried to explain to others exactly what we saw, but our consumer society doesn't want to know.

G tells us that we must keep in mind our death every single day. This will cure  us of the disease of "tomorrow", the deeply ingrained habits of procrastination and denial which keep us asleep and  prevent us from working on ourselves.

We may die at any moment. We don't know what will happen by nightfall, or by tomorrow morning. A sudden stroke or heart attack may take us in a second, or we could be mown down by a runaway lorry as we cross the street.

A Catholic prayer asks that we may be protected from an unexpected death, coming at a time when we are unprepared to meet our Maker. The corollary is, of course, that by praying in this way, by keeping our death always in mind, not in a fearful way but simply as one of the possible events that may happen to us this day, we actually do achieve a state of readiness.

Dying with a peaceful conscience is open to everyone, and it is the "good death" that euthanasia is not.

May we all undergo a good death when our time comes.