[Dialogue] Death with Dignity & Death of the church

[kroegerd@aol.com]

August 23, 2005
On Death With Dignity 

Late last month I joined with other religious leaders, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish, to file an amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the State of Oregon in the case of Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General v. the State of Oregon. Specifically, our brief asked the Supreme Court to uphold the decision made by the Ninth Circuit Court in 2004 that ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft had acted inappropriately when he intervened to block Oregon's legal practice of physician-assisted suicide. The State of Oregon created this right for its citizens in two separate referendums, setting assisted suicide inside the framework of tightly controlled guidelines, based entirely on the desires of the patient. Attorney General Ashcroft in initiating his suit has claimed that the federal law known as the Controlled Substances Act gave him the authority to take this action. The State of Oregon responded immediately in a countersuit, accusing him of both the inappropriate use of that act and an improper utilization of federal power. The Ninth Circuit Court ruled in favor of the State of Oregon. Before John Ashcroft resigned as Attorney General, he appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. That Court agreed to hear the appeal although now Alberto Gonzales, Ashcroft's successor, is the name attached to the case. The case should be heard this fall in the first session of the Court since the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. 
The amicus brief, drawn up by the Washington law office of Jones Day, actually quotes me in the latter part of the document. Even more importantly, it quotes from the Task Force on Assisted Suicide adopted in 1996 by the convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark. This report stated the conviction of the majority of the convention's delegates that physician-assisted dying "can be theologically and ethically justified" when a terminally ill person "makes a voluntary and informed choice after all reasonable means of ameliorating his or her suffering have been exhausted." A full copy of the report of the Task Force can be read by going to http//www.dioceseofnewark.org/report.html. I still marvel that this report has achieved such influence in the life of our nation. 
I remember that moment in the life of the Diocese of Newark as if it were yesterday. It was the finest debate over which I presided in all of my 24 years as the bishop of that remarkable community of faith. The convention that received and acted on this report was made up of approximately 600 people: 150 of them were ordained priests, 450 of them were lay people elected by their respective congregations to represent their churches at this diocesan gathering. 
The task force that drafted the report was co-chaired by the Reverend Dr. Lawrence Falkowski, who, prior to his seeking ordination, had been a professor of political science at Louisiana State University, and Dr. Mary Hager, a professor at a small liberal arts college in New Jersey. It represented a year of intense study by many people. The members of this task force conducted open hearings on this issue in various locations across northern New Jersey. When its final draft was complete, it was distributed widely among all our churches and discussed at gatherings of the people of the diocese in separate congregational meetings as well as in nine preconvention convocational gatherings. Copies were also handed out to the media, including print, radio, and television in both New York and New Jersey. This issue created great energy, and there was a high level of anticipation prior to the meeting of the decision-making diocesan convention. No one could argue that this report came as a surprise. 
On the last Friday afternoon in January, the co-chairs introduced the report to the convention with a full presentation to move its adoption. That motion was then referred to an open hearing, which gave every delegate the right to speak for or against it before the report was to be brought to a final vote the following day. It also gave the Task Force members the right to make any last minute changes to the report before the formal vote would be taken. 
The next day, the resolution was brought from the open hearing and placed on the floor for adoption. The final debate now began in earnest. Individuals spoke movingly and emotionally about their own experiences with loved ones who had been kept alive beyond the point where they had a shred of personal integrity or dignity left. They referred to excessive bills that had to be borne by survivors in what was a hopeless battle simply to prolong not life but existence. It was noted in the debate that these were very modern issues, since a century ago the persons being discussed would have died whether they wanted to or not since neither the technology nor medical expertise to keep them alive existed. The advances in medical science, stretching life expectancy to levels our grandparents could not imagine, were applauded. Some delegates sought to find that point where medical science ceases to expand life and acts only to postpone death, wondering if the former can be cheered and the latter resisted. 
Those in opposition spoke about the sacredness of life and whether human beings had the right or the capacity to make life-and-death decisions. Many expressed concern about what was called the slippery-slope argument. If this practice were made legal then what would follow? Would greedy heirs hasten the deaths of their parents in order to gain their inheritances earlier? Would doctors, weary of giving care, abdicate their responsibility to save life and become the destroyers of life? Would hospitals and health management organizations seek to enhance their bottom line by dispatching costly patients who had outlived their resources? 
This debate lasted for three hours. Amendments were offered. They had the effect of making clear what the report was designed to say. The final authority in every end-of-life decision was unequivocally to be that of the patient, in person if possible, by an advance directive if not. It was stated that the person the patient loved and trusted most must be empowered to make the final decision if illness rendered the patient incompetent to decide. Even then the voluntary nature of this decision was stressed. No one should ever be forced to end his or her life without one's own consent. Steps were taken to guard against a precipitous act that might be regretted later or to allow depression, which so often accompanies sickness, to be the cause of premature death. The medical diagnosis had to be firm that the disease was incurable. This meant that the choice was not about whether one was going to die, but about how and when and under what circumstances death would occur. It was about whether a breathing cadaver is a living being. It was about having a chance to be with those you love most while you can still enjoy their company. It was about shortening the agony of both patient and family alike when the situation was hopeless. It was about death being used as a way of affirming life. It was about whether our Christian faith allows us to make decisions for ourselves as mature people, as co-creators with the God of life. 
Finally, the debate ended, the question was called, and the vote was taken. More than two-thirds of that assembly of deeply committed Christians said that physician-assisted suicide could be a Christian option under carefully outlined circumstances. A new consciousness was born in that gathering on that day, and it is still growing. It is deeply gratifying for me to see the words of that group ? the first assembly of any church in America to vote to accept physician-assisted suicide as a stated value of Christian people ? included in this brief before the Supreme Court of the United States. 
The Court will weigh many factors. Its members will address the limits on federal power to overturn state-endorsed procedures, which have been affirmed by a significant majority of that state's voters. They will determine who has the right to make end-of-life decisions. Is it the patient, the nearest of kin, the physician, the Supreme Court, the insurance companies, or the politicians? Between the 1996 report of the Diocese of Newark and the current appeal to the Supreme Court, this nation has witnessed the Terri Schiavo case, in which politicians sought to overrule Ms. Schiavo's own directive, her husband, her doctors, and the courts. In that case, a woman, brain-dead for more than a decade, had been kept alive artificially, with a feeding tube inserted into her stomach, while religious leaders and politicians sought to force her husband to violate her stated intentions. Representative Tom DeLay and Senator Bill Frist rushed a bill through Congress for the President to sign after a midnight flight from Crawford, Texas, to Washington. Polls indicated that a vast majority of the people of this nation recoiled at this spectacle. Now this issue will be before the highest court of the land. The Oregon law has been carefully crafted. In that law the potential pitfalls have had strong guards erected against them. Oregon citizens have used these provisions very sparingly since they were made the law of that state. They obviously wanted this law as a legal option even if it were destined to be seldom used. So do I. That is why I have joined this fight before the Supreme Court. 
I believe both that life is sacred and that death is a natural part of life. I believe that I should have the right, if possible, to determine how and when I die. I believe a good death is a tribute to a good life. If I am told that I have a terminal disease and that the pain can be managed only by the use of drugs that will prohibit my being able to see the smile of my wonderful wife or to know the touch of her hand, then I want the right to end my life in her embrace, saying "I love you" while I still can. I have trusted God and my wife during my life. I must be able to trust both in my death. I hope the Supreme Court will uphold my right to die with dignity. 
? John Shelby Spong 
  
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
Ron Garrett via the Internet writes: 
"I wonder if fiddling around on the periphery on the issues of gay and lesbian rights can ever yield what the Church lacks: a compelling vision which, if received and fulfilled, would improve humanity as a whole. Christianity has no unique truth and its claims, like those of all various religions, is that it must rest upon a "Thus saith the Lord." My own view, an ever-changing one I admit, is that the Church has no transcendent truth to offer and knows it full well. If nothing you offer has self-evident merit and you can't admit the truth and survive as an organization, then you resort to either intimidating everyone within into an orthodoxy no one sees the sense or benefit in obeying any longer or you wander aimlessly about preaching inoffensive feel-good messages that everyone agrees with anyway without getting out of bed early on a Sunday AM. Both directions lead to irrelevance and that is the crux of the matter. The Church is irrelevant because truth is irrelevant to the Church and it has nothing to offer that I can't get elsewhere without having to abandon my common sense or individual autonomy. It either demands orthodoxy in matters even school children should know are primitivistic and silly or it demands orthodoxy toward a nameless Care Bear worldview that scarcely needs a Church to propose it. Primitive tribal codes or anomie. Not much to choose between and not much to justify buildings, clergy, tax exemptions, satellite channels, etc. Jesus was either a deity or a lay preacher. Either there is a Christian God whose moral judgment is somehow clearer than our own and should be accepted, assuming it will provide a better result than a life of our own devising, or the religion is simply one of many religious delusions and a childish self-indulgence that intelligent modern humanity should leave behind. I don't see a middle ground that withstands rational examination. Even ER physicians know there is a time to stop trying to resuscitate a corpse." 
Dear Ron, 
You raise fascinating and challenging issues for which I am grateful. You articulate well basic questions that the Church's leadership tends so often to ignore. Let me respond. 
Human beings are responsible for the creation of every doctrine of God, every creed and every religious system. Since that it true then we should expect to see our religious ideas be constantly corrupted by the human need to control and to build power. Truth is always perceived subjectively which means that truth is perceived differently in every generation. There may well be objective and eternal truth but no human being possesses it, no human being can perceive it and no human being can articulate it. The assumption that one can is the place where destructive religious arrogance and the sin of idolatry always begin. How one understands reality, the level of knowledge that one possesses, and the time in which one lives are always factors in processing what religious people mistakenly call "Revealed Truth." That is when we make claims such as "our Pope is infallible," or "our Bible is inerrant," or my religion possesses the only pathway to God. Most religious systems never escape this mentality since certainty, even a pretended certainty, seems to bring a much-desired security to its adherents. However, human history reveals that when a religious group claims certainty, it also becomes demonic and tries to kill anyone who disagrees, challenges or threatens their claim to truth. Your criticism of Christianity seems to be a criticism of what the Church has done to and with Christians and others over the centuries. I think that is a valid criticism and one that must be heard. 
At the same time, however, we need to recognize that while human beings certainly create their explanations of God, they do not, I am persuaded, create the experience of transcendence, the holy, and the Other that we have come to call God. So while I am willing to challenge any human explanation of God, I do not think that I can challenge either effectively or ultimately the reality of the experience of God. 
Religious systems grow out of that experience. I live within the Christian religious system. I walk the Christ path into the mystery and wonder of God. I make no claim that my path is the only path or that my truth is the only truth. I regard God alone as Truth and I know that I do not possess God. I only journey toward God. 
When I look at the life of Jesus, I see one who is fully alive, one who is totally and wastefully loving, one who has the courage and the ability to be all that he can be. Because I define my experience of God as that reality in which I find the fullness of life, the totality of love and the Ground of Being, I have no difficulty saying that in the life of Jesus, I believe I confront the presence of God. That is why I am committed to walking the Christ path. 
Finally, I take seriously the words that the author of the Fourth Gospel put into the mouth of Jesus. Attempting to describe his purpose, Jesus is made to say, "I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly." If that is a statement of the purpose of Christ then I believe that must also be the purpose of the Church. That is where I find Christianity's compelling vision. The task of the Church is to build a world in which every person has a better chance to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that that person has the capability of being. So anything that diminishes life for anyone, whether on the basis of race, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation or even religion is evil and must be confronted. Anything that enhances life, increases love and calls others into being is good and must be encouraged. 
It seems so simple to me. My work for justice for gay and lesbian people, that is the issue that prompted your letter, is not to me tangential to Christianity. It is rather the very heart of what it means to be a Christian. I hope this will help to clarify the issue. Thank you for forcing me to think this through again. 
? John Shelby Spong 
 
Dick Kroeger