Approaching the Mystery of Death: Liturgical Morality and Dying in the 21st Century
Ethan Schimmoeller, Medical Student,The University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, The Ohio State University Division of Bioethics
Medicine believes it has domesticated death. On the one hand, medical progress extends survival in an often strenuous elimination of suffering and denial of death. This transposes death and dying in the 21st century from the home and traditional funeral liturgies into intensive care, furthering the narrative of a secular society after God. Absent is the dead person from community. On the other hand, dying increasingly comes under the domain of decision, particularly with assisted-suicide and euthanasia. The autonomous and medicalized death progressively becomes the good secular death today. At its most transcendent moment, the dead person’s organs can relieve the human estate.
Every-body remembers it is finite. Death remains mysterious as all men and women die, even more so, in the Church, for we liturgically enter God’s death and resurrection. This paper will explore a liturgical morality of dying that approaches death as a mystery, not as an enemy to domesticate. Following Fagerberg and Schmemann, it perceives a profound link from the lex orandi to the lex credendi to the lex moralis. Yoking prayer to belief to morality, dying well proceeds from the Church’s liturgical experience. This paper will accordingly ask, what do contemporary Roman Catholic rites for the dying say about the good death? And how does it respond to the secular vision of the good death?
Every-body remembers it is finite. Death remains mysterious as all men and women die, even more so, in the Church, for we liturgically enter God’s death and resurrection. This paper will explore a liturgical morality of dying that approaches death as a mystery, not as an enemy to domesticate. Following Fagerberg and Schmemann, it perceives a profound link from the lex orandi to the lex credendi to the lex moralis. Yoking prayer to belief to morality, dying well proceeds from the Church’s liturgical experience. This paper will accordingly ask, what do contemporary Roman Catholic rites for the dying say about the good death? And how does it respond to the secular vision of the good death?