Legislation to allow medical aid in dying (MAiD) is back in Minnesota. The End-of-Life Option Act was introduced in the state senate last week. Modeled after Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, the Minnesota bill would allow Minnesotans with a prognosis of six months or less to receive a prescription medication to hasten death. It has the usual safeguards to protect all parties.
The bill’s chief author is Senator Chris Eaton, a registered nurse who has been down this path before. I met her in 2016 when she led a public forum about that year’s version of the bill. I eventually testified at a committee hearing in support of the bill. You can read about that in my blog post of August 8, 2020.
If you live in Minnesota, please contact your elected officials and ask them to support the current bill. If you know anyone who lives in Minnesota, please ask them to do the same. Here’s a link to make that a bit easier: EMAIL YOUR LAWMAKERS. That link opens a form letter with space to add a personal note (please do – personalized messages are more impactful). Those forms are a bit too limiting for me, so I sent my state senator a personal email. He actually replied (!) and said he is hearing from “a lot of area constituents” with “persuasive arguments on both sides of the issue.” I then asked what he considers a persuasive argument against medical aid in dying, I mentioned that I’m a speaker for Final Exit Network, and I offered to have a conversation based on factual data. I’m waiting for his follow-up reply.
I find the timing of the bill particularly interesting from a chaplain’s perspective. We are now in the church season known as Lent, which starts with Ash Wednesday and ends the night before Easter. It is meant to be a time of renewal and reflection in preparation for Easter and typically involves fasting or some other sacrifice. It’s a yearly ritual for many to state what they are “giving up for Lent.”
When discussing medical aid in dying, Catholics often refer to the doctrine of redemptive suffering. It’s based on the idea that Jesus redeemed the sins of humanity through his suffering and death, and that, through our suffering, we can somehow participate in that redemptive process.
Suffering can indeed serve a higher purpose. Suffering from an illness can make your immune system stronger. Suffering an injury can make you physically stronger and perhaps encourage you to be more aware of your surroundings in order to avoid injuries in the future. Psychological or emotional suffering can lead to more resiliency as you learn more coping skills. Suffering a business failure can teach you valuable lessons that lead to even more success beyond your original goals.
Suffering any kind of loss can make you more sympathetic to others, even if that loss is not exactly the same. You can never truly know how another person feels, even if you have suffered a similar loss. As an American Indian hospital patient once told me, “Even if you walk a mile in my moccasins, it’s still you walking in my moccasins, not me.” But sometimes it helps to simply be in the same room with someone you know has experienced a similar loss.
But not all suffering serves a higher purpose. I only need to burn myself once to know I shouldn’t touch a hot stove or guzzle a steaming beverage. Repeating the experience doesn’t make me stronger, it only means I didn’t learn from the first time.
If I recover from an illness, I might become more sympathetic to others with that illness. If I lose someone close to me and and felt supported by a hospice team, I might become a hospice volunteer to help others going through a similar experience.
But if I’m dying, suffering will not somehow help me to later help someone else to die.
Jesus apparently knew that suffering in itself does not necessarily serve a divine purpose. If suffering from all illness is somehow good, he would not have healed the sick and the lame. On the contrary, he would have gone to great lengths to explain why he could not perform those miracles. He could have said that blindness serves a higher purpose, or that leprosy was really a gift from God. But he healed both the blind and the leper.
You could argue that those people gave Jesus opportunities to perform miracles and therefore prove his divinity. But he could have performed other miracles just as convincing without anyone needing to suffer. Jesus could have disappeared into thin air and then reappeared on top of a building. He could have made rain fall from a cloudless sky, or stopped a torrential downpour in midair. He could have made entire crowds levitate. He could have made entire buildings levitate. But he didn’t do those things. He healed the sick and ended their suffering.
This Lenten season, I invite everyone — Christian or not — to reflect not just on Jesus’ suffering and death. Instead, consider also that his teachings focused on love. “Love your neighbor as yourself” appears in nine different places in the New Testament.
Be like Jesus. Don’t encourage people to suffer. If you can’t heal them, at least allow their suffering to end. Let them be renewed.
PLEASE, if you get this from me, just read to the end. Worthwhile!!
Thanks, Pat
Sorry Kevin, you don’t understand some Catholics viewpoint AT ALL. (personally, I’m a Jewish Atheist). You are applying your reasoning and biblical interpretations to faith. This never, ever works. It only annoys the pig.
The concept of redemptive suffering was first explained to me by a former Catholic priest. I don’t pretend to understand it. Feel free to add anything that might help me understand it. I do agree that applying reason to faith can be a fool’s errand. That’s why it’s called *blind* faith.
“Lent” is strictly a Roman Catholic thing. From my upbringing, I am familiar with holy rollers, tongue talkers, and snake handlers, which is to say, fundamentalists. Most non-Catholic Americans consider “Lent” to be foreign and associated with the demonic Catholic cult rituals such as praying to Mary and worshiping idols, which is utter blasphemy. I never heard of “Lent” until I grew old enough to read about Mardi Gras.
It is definitely a Catholic thing, but not strictly. During my childhood, my family regularly attended a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. Lent was a big deal with mid-week services in addition to Sundays. Most Minnesotans who claim a religious background were/are either Catholic or Lutheran and I’d be very surprised if the vast majority of Lutherans were not familiar with Lent. The three seminaries I attended (in Denver, Fort Worth, and Kansas City) included Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Episcopalians, Unitarian Universalists, and many others. Everyone seemed to be least familiar with Lent, although some didn’t seem to care about it all that much. Mardi Gras is an interesting paradox with deep religious roots as well as rampant hedonism.
Mr. Bradley is 100% correct. I grew up just outside Madison, Wisconsin. Wisconsin was (and still is) primarily Lutheran and Catholic country. My parents were devout Lutherans and we were at church every time the doors were open, including every midweek Advent and Lent service. I atrtended the two public universities in Wisconsin. When I last visited the one where I studied during my freshman year four years ago, the Lutherans and Catholics had a joint student center. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I earned a B.S., there is a large Catholic Newman Center. There are separate student centers for the ELCA, Missouri Synod, and Wisconsin Synod Lutherans. Of course, as is the case on all large public universities, there are also smaller campus ministries for Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Assemblies of God, etc., and non-Christian faiths, but the Catholics and Lutherans are the largest by far.
Prior to World War II, Wisconsin had the highest proportion of residents of German ancestry in the US. There are also a significant number who have Scandinavian ancestry. This probably explains the high proportion of Catholics and Lutherans in the state.
Married a lapsed Catholic and we eventually split the difference. He later returned to the faith and eventually became a regular attender at the Anglican church where I had been a member for a number of years.
Very well stated article regarding Catholics. I have very much appreciated the right to live, but hope they will find a good way to let us have the right to die as well. Jesus chose to die, rather than have his many followers be killed to get to him, like two year olds were when his parents took him to Egypt. But I sure wouldn’t want him to die for my sins.
Life and death go hand in hand like day and night, summer and winter. Nature requires balance.