Death in Theological Reflection

For instance, without assuming mistaken views about death or compassion, some may claim that in difficult cases a proportionate reason or the weighing of prospective good and bad consequences can justify euthanasia, and that proportionalism or consequentialism has grounds in traditional Catholic moral theology. These approaches are examined and found wanting by John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 71-83, AAS 85 (1993) 1190–1200, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 6 Oct. 1993, pp. xi-xiii.

Some materialists present death as the ultimate unification experience — of merging back into the universe — or otherwise romanticize it; for examples, see Johnston Ralph D. Jr. Confronting Death: Psychoreligious Responses (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988), pp. 13–15. Since process philosophy has no basis in revelation, I also consider theologically irrelevant A.N. Whitehead's view that death is necessary to actualize fully an individual's life as an element of “the all-inclusive experience of God's becoming”; still, some do consider that view theologically relevant: see, e.g., Robert L. Kinast, When a Person Dies: Pastoral Theology in Death Experiences (New York: Crossroad, 1984), p. 114.

For example, some of the theologies of death that will be discussed in section II, below, involve soul-body dualism. Again, dualism was implicit in the so-called majority working paper of Paul VI's Pontifical Commission on Population, Family, and Births, Documentum syntheticum de moralitate regulationis nativitatum, 2.4: “Ipsum donum mutuum per totam vitam perdurat, foecunditas biologica non est continua et est subiecta multis irregularitatibus, ideo in sfaerem humanam assumi et in ea regulari debet.” Since nothing assumes what it already is or has of itself, those who wrote that “biological fecundity ought to be assumed into the human sphere” clearly presupposed that the biological fecundity of human persons is not per se human. Dualism also influences those who hold that keeping people alive in no way benefits them if there is no prospect that they will ever gain or regain the ability to attain other goods. For example, Richard McCormick, “The Defective Infant (2): Practical Considerations,” The Tablet (London), 21 July 1984, p. 691, asserted: “Life is a value to be preserved precisely as providing the condition for other values and therefore in so far as these other values remain attainable. To say anything else is, I submit, to make an idol of mere physical existence.”

Fletcher Joseph , Morals and Medicine: The Moral Problems of: The Patient's Right to Know the Truth, Contraception, Artificial Insemination, Sterilization, and Euthanasia (Boston: Beacon, 1960), p. 211. By contrast, see Robert M. Cooper, “Do I Own My Body?” Anglican Theological Review, 55 (1973): pp. 420-33.

Fletcher , op. cit., p. 191

See the articles: sub verbo “Man” in Encyclopedia of Biblical Theology: The Complete Sacramentum Verbi, ed. Johannes B. Bauer (New York: crossroad. 1981); sub verbo “Body” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992).

Gaudium et Spes, 14: “Corpore et anima unus, homo …”; for the synonymy of man and human person in this context, see Gaudium et Spes, 15.2.

See St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 1, q. 93, a. 6; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 356–57.

See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 364.

Paul VI, Address to Members of “équipes Notre-Dame”, 3, AAS 62 (1970) 429, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 14 May 1970, p. 8.

See Paul John II , General Audience (14 Nov. 1979), Inseg. 2.2 (1979) 1153–57, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 19 Nov. 1979, pp. 1, 16; Mulieris Dignitatem, 6-7, AAS 80 (1988) 1662-67, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 3 Oct. 1988, pp. 3-4.

Paul John II Homily at Capitol Mall (Washington, D.C.), 3, AAS 71 (1979) 1271, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 5 Nov. 1979, p. 7.

See St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 1, q. 18, a. 2: in its most proper sense, to live simply means to exist according to a nature that includes capacities for various sorts of self-development.

See Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus (29 Jan. 1336), DS 1000-1002/530-31.

Against theories of the soul in conflict with the faith, this was taught by the Council of Vienne, Fidei catholicae (6 May 1312), DS 902/481; and by the Fifth Lateran Council, Apostolici regiminis (19 Dec. 1513), DS 1440/738.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 365, explains what it means to say that the soul is the “form” of the body: “it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”

That may be why the Athenian crowd responded badly (see Acts 17.32-33) to Paul's preaching when he mentioned Jesus’ resurrection.

St. Thomas, Super primam epistolam ad Corinthios lectura, xv, lect. 2, ad v. 19; cf. De ente et essentia, c.2 (ed. Leonina, t.43, pp. 371-72, 11. 105-50, 201-7); Quodlibetum VII, q. 5, a.1, ad 3; Summa Theologiae, 1, q. 75, a.4. Some will object that it overstates the case to say that dying takes away the concrete reality of a human person (as John Paul II implies) and is his/her ceasing to be (as St. Thomas implies). Those objecting will argue that, in praying for the dead and to canonized saints, we surely are not praying for and to nothing, but for and to real human individuals, who must, in some true sense, still be persons. The answer is that though a separated soul is not a human person, it is the spiritual remains of the individual whose form it was, and this remnant of the person can engage in some spiritual functions and carry on some relationships. As the subject of these functions and as involved in these relationships, the separated soul can even be said to be the ego humanum of the person whose soul it was: see Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter on Certain Questions Pertaining to Eschatology, AAS 71 (1979) 941, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 23 July 1979, p. 7; also see Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 2, Living a Christian Life (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993), p. 465, n. 9. So, though human persons cease to be in dying, our relationships with the dead are with something real, and we continue to refer to separated souls by the familiar names of the persons whose souls they were and imagine those persons as if they had already risen: see St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 2-2, q. 83, a. 11, ad 5.

The accounts being summarized are: Emile Mersch S.J. The Theology of the Mystical Body, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1951), pp. 262–70; Robert W. Gleason, “Toward a Theology of Death,” Thought, 32 (Spring 1957): pp. 39-68; Karl Rahner, On the Theology of Death, Quaestiones Disputatae, 2 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961); Roger Troisfontaines, S.J., I Do Not Die, trans. Francis E. Albert (New York: Desclee, 1963); Ladislaus Boros, S.J., The Mystery of Death (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965).

See Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927), trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 279–311.

See, for example, Gleason , op. cit. p. 62.

See, for example, Gleason , op. cit., cf. Rahner, op.cit., pp. 64–88.

Rahner , op. cit., pp. 51–53, differs from the other authors by holding that the consummating exercise of freedom occurs, not precisely at death, but throughout life. So, for him it is not a final option but rather a fundamental option. For the reasons why that view is theologically unsound, see John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 65-68, AAS 85 (1993) 1184-88, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 6 Oct. 1993, p. x; Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago; Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), pp. 382-90.

Troisfontaines , op. cit., p. 149.

Boros , op. cit., p. 84 (emphasis omitted).

Gleason , op. cit., p. 64.

Mersch , op. cit., p. 265.

Rahner , op. cit. p. 39.

See Mersch , op. cit., pp. 266–69; Gleason, op. cit., pp. 63-67; Rahner, op. cit., pp. 37-39, 51-52; Troisfontaines, op. cit., pp. 150-88; Boros, op. cit., pp. 85-99.

In addition to the two considerations that will be pursued here, one might develop four others: the innovative theories lack direct support in Scripture and tradition; they tend to lessen or even negate the significance of free choices, even those made in grave matter with sufficient reflection; some if not all of these theories involve an incoherent notion of freedom, inasmuch as they project so attractive an “option” for God that nobody could prefer the alternative; and, whatever plausibility talk about a consummating act of death has in reference to people who have engaged in human acts, such talk is entirely implausible in reference to individuals who die without ever having made any free choice.

See Council of Trent, Decretum de peccato originale (17 June, 1546), DS 1511-12/788-89. The revealed truth that death is a punishment for original sin should not be taken to mean that God chose death and imposed it on humankind, answering evil with evil. It need only mean that, the first human beings having sinned, God does not prevent human nature from taking the course on which sin set it. Insofar as human persons are bodily and organisms are naturally corruptible, death is a natural and physically inevitable process. But it does not follow that death is good for human beings — any more than it is for the individuals of other organic species. Nor does it follow that death is intrinsically necessary for human fulfillment or that human beings would have died even had they not sinned. Some Fathers of the Church believed both that death is naturally inevitable and that it is a consequence of sin; St. Athanasius, for instance, explains: “God not only made us out of nothing, but he also gave us freely, by the grace of the Word, a life divinely oriented. But men rejected the things of eternity and, on the prompting of the devil, turned to the things of corruption. They became the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, they were by nature corruptible, but were destined, by the grace of the communion of the Word, to have escaped the consequences of nature, had they remained good. Because of the Word and his dwelling among them, even the corruption natural to them would not have affected them, as Wisdom (2.23-24) also says: ‘God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own nature, but through the devil's envy death entered the world.’” (Oratio de incarnatione Verbi, 5, 1-2, PG 25, 104C-105A).

Rahner , op. cit., p. 42; cf. pp. 54-57. In a later work, “Death,” in Encyclopedia of Theology, The Concise Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner (New York: Seabury, 1975), pp. 329-30, Rahner seems to insinuate that the “death” that is a consequence of sin is not really death but only “death as we know it now, as part of man's constitution subject to concupiscence, in darkness, weakness and obscurity regarding its actual nature”; other theologians certainly hold some such view. For an argument that such views are at odds with the truth of Catholic faith and that the alleged scientific support for them drawn from the theory of evolution or other scientific views is beside the point, see Grisez, Christian Moral Principles, pp. 346-48 and p. 358, nn. 27-28.

Since Rahner holds that the consummating act is a fundamental rather than a final option, this argument is the last one in this section meant to refer to his view.

See Mersch , op. cit., p. 265; Gleason, op. cit., pp. 63-64.

See Boros , op. cit., pp. 68–81.

Rahner Karl , On the Theology of Death, p. 35, put the truth that death seals human destiny in this way: A proposition of faith “affirms that with bodily death, man's state of pilgrimage (to employ the usual theological expression) comes to a definite end. Death brings man, as a moral-spiritual person, a kind of finality and consummation which renders his decision for or against God, reached during the time of his bodily life, final and unalterable.”

As is clear from the New Testament (e.g., Lk 16.26; Jn 9.4; 2 Cor 5.10), the Church's constant and universal practice in caring for the dying; and the solemn teaching of the Second Council of Lyons, Professio fidei Michaelis Palaeologi (6 July 1274), DS 856-58/464; Benedict XII, loc. cit.; and the Council of Florence, Decretum pro Graecis (6 July 1439), DS 1304-6/693.

Boros , op. cit., p. 4

See Mersch , op. cit., p. 265; Gleason, op. cit., pp. 63-64.

See Troisfontaines , op. cit., p. 154; Boros, op. cit., pp. 4-5.

Mersch , op. cit., p. 267 (emphasis added). Note “the moment of liberation”; this phrase manifests the influence of the dualistic view criticized in section I, above.

Gleason , op. cit., p. 64 (emphasis added).

Quoted with approval from P. Glorieux, by Troisfontaines , op. cit., p. 157 (his emphasis deleted, mine added).

Boros , op. cit., p. viii (emphasis added). The passage goes on (viii-ix): “Man's deepest being comes rushing towards him. With it comes all at once and all together the universe he has always borne hidden within himself, the universe with which he was already most intimately united, and which, in one way or other, was always being produced from within him. Humanity too, everywhere driven by a like force, a humanity that bears within itself, all unsuspecting, a splendor he could never have imagined, also comes rushing towards him. Being flows towards him like a boundless stream of things, meanings, persons and happenings, ready to convey him right into the Godhead. Yes; God himself stretches out his hand for him; God who, in every stirring of his existence, had been in him as his deepest mystery, from the stuff of which he had always been forming himself; God who had ever been driving him on towards an eternal destiny. There now man stands, free to accept or reject this splendor. In a last, final decision he either allows this flood of realities to flow past him, while he stands there eternally turned to stone, like a rock past which the life-giving stream flows on, noble enough in himself no doubt, but abandoned and eternally alone; or he allows himself to be carried along by this flood, becomes part of it and flows on into eternal fulfillment.” Why would anyone not allow himself or herself to be carried along into eternal fulfillment? And why would anyone who anticipated such an opportunity for cheap and easy conversion take seriously Jesus’ warnings to prepare for death?

Gleason , op. cit., p. 66; cf. Rahner, op. cit., pp. 37-38.

See Eph 2.10. Recent popes and Vatican II make it clear that everyone has a personal vocation, and John Paul II richly develops this teaching in many of his documents. For references to that body of teaching and a moral theology of personal vocation, see Grisez . Living a Christian Life, pp. 104–29.

See Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 38–39. Unfortunately, the significance of this conciliar teaching for fundamental moral theology is overlooked by both Veritatis Splendor and the moral section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church; that encyclical and the entire catechism also omit mention of Vatican II's and John Paul II's teaching about personal vocation.

See Heb. 6.19.

This argument is not ad hominem. As Wolin Richard , The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990) shows (pp. 16-130, summary p. 66), Heidegger's philosophy, not requiring any specific option, did not require him to opt for Nazism; but, not being a sound philosophy, Heidegger's anthropology-ethics both failed to rule out Nazism and disposed him to decide for it. The even-handed work of Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, trans. Ewald Osers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 225-306, confirms both the depth of Heidegger's commitment to Nazism and the commitment's roots in his philosophy.

Though nothing escapes God's providence, one who considers people's deaths from the point of view of secondary causes and surviving dependents’ concerns must say that some deaths should (in various senses) not have occurred — deaths due to others’ wrongdoing or negligence, untimely deaths of young children's parents, and so on. Prudent pastors both promptly acknowledge the immanent situations grieving survivors face and compassionately support their efforts to deal reasonably with those situations. At the same time, such pastors avoid glib pieties and carefully discern the right moment, which may be days or weeks after the funeral, to offer consolation by urging hope in God's mercy, recalling His providence, and encouraging resignation to His loving plan.

St. Thomas, De perfectione vitae spiritualis, 5, explains that to love God with one's whole heart is to order one's entire life to the service of God, with one's whole mind is to subject one's intellect entirely to faith in God's word, with one's whole soul is to relate all one's affection to God and to love all else in Him, and with one's whole strength is to perform all outward words and deeds out of love.

The blessed also will be free of temptation from without, for the kingdom will not present temptations as the (fallen) world does, and Satan no longer will be permitted to harass God's children.

See Paul John II Evangelium Vitae, 64–66, AAS 87 (1995) 474-78, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 5 April 1995, pp. xii-xiii; n. 82 refers to Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium, 25 (where the conditions for the infallibility of the ordinary magisterium are articulated) and the encyclical's accompanying text (at the end of 65) states: “This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.” That statement together with the reference to Lumen Gentium, 25, implies that the teaching excluding euthanasia has been proposed infallibly — see Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the “Professio fidei,” 11, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 15 July 1998, p. 4.

See Ceslas Spicq, O.P., Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, trans, and ed. James D. Ernest (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), vol. 1, pp. 471–79.

See Mt. 9.36, 14.14, 15.32, 20.34; Mk 6.34, 8.2; Lk 7.13.

Blum Lawrence A. , Moral Perception and Particularity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 173–82, provides a phenomenology of compassion considered as an emotional attitude, and points out (p. 182): “Compassion can also be misguided, grounded in superficial understanding of a situation. Compassion is not necessarily wise or appropriate. The compassionate person may even end up doing more harm than good.” C. Daniel Batson et al,. “Immorality from Empathy-Induced Altruism: When Compassion and Justice Conflict,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68 (1995): pp. 1042-54, report experiments showing that people stirred to compassionate feelings manifested partiality in allocating resources in a way they themselves admitted to be less fair and less moral than the alternative chosen by the control group.

The preceding analysis of compassion draws on, but freely recasts and develops, helpful insights of Pellegrino Edmund D. , “The Moral Status of Compassion in Bioethics: The Sacred and the Secular,” Ethics and Medics, 20: 9 (Sept. 1995): pp. 3–4.

Even God foresees and accepts evils that He does not choose: see Council of Trent, Decretum de iustificatione (13 January 1547), canon 6, DS 1556/816; St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 1, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2; q. 49, a. 2; 1-2, q. 79, aa. 2-4; Summa contra gentiles, 1.96, 3.71. If one rejects the proposition that God foresees and freely accepts evils without intending any evil as an end or as a chosen means, then one must, if consistent, deny at least one of three propositions, all of which pertain to faith: that God's will is perfectly holy, that His providence is all-embracing, and that some creatures have sinned with the result that evil is real. So, accepting bad side effects can be compatible with good will. But choosing what is bad or having a bad end in view is never compatible with good will, because making a choice is self-determining with respect to everything included in the proposal adopted by that choice. Still, agents who wrongly accept side effects often have chosen previously to violate the good involved or in the course of deliberation have made a procedural choice to disregard the interests of the person or persons who will be adversely affected, and so have determined themselves wrongly. Thus, though the distinction between rightly accepting a bad side effect and choosing what would bring about the same state of affairs is morally crucial, there often is little if any moral significance to the distinction between wrongly accepting a bad side effect and choosing what will bring about the same bad state of affairs.

See Paul John II Evengelium Vitae, 65, AAS 87 (1995) 476, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 5 April 1995, p. xiii, reaffirming a point already clarified by Pius XII and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Though the person making that homicidal choice might claim to intend only to eliminate pain (and perhaps other burdens), he or she also would intend to kill: the shortening of life would be the agent's intermediate end in view, sought not for its own sake but as a means to the ulterior, declared end.

See, e.g., Paul John II Veritatis Splendor, 48 and 50, AAS 85 (1993) 1171-72 and 1173-74, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 6 October 1993, p. viii; Evangelium Vitae, 75-77, AAS 87 (1995) 488-90, L'Osservatore Romano (English), 5 April 1995, pp. xiv-xv.

Pius XII, Christmas Message (24 December 1944), AAS 37 (1945) 18, Catholic Mind, 43 (February 1945): p. 72, teaches that there is a duty to ban “wars of aggression as legitimate solutions of international disputes and as a means toward realizing national aspirations”; in Christmas Message (24 December 1948), AAS 41 (1949) 12-13, Catholic Mind, 47 (March 1949): p. 184, Pius XII also teaches: “Every war of aggression against those goods which the Divine plan for peace obliges men unconditionally to respect and guarantee, and accordingly to protect and defend, is a sin, a crime, and an outrage against the majesty of God, the Creator and Ordainer of the world.”

See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2263.

See Catechism of the Catholic Church, editio typico 2265 (war) and 2267 (capital punishment), emphasis added.

1 Cor. 15.26.

That plainly is the view of St. Paul — see 2 Cor 5.1-10 — and of the funeral liturgy's “life is changed, not ended” (The Roman Missal: The Sacramentary, Preface of Christian Death I”). By contrast with Paul's explicit wish for resurrection — not to be unclothed but to be fully clothed — life is changed, not ended might seem to express a dualistic outlook. But in context it too clearly manifests Christian hope in bodily resurrection, which overcomes the evil of death by restoring the bodily person to immortal life.

Bear in mind that God foresees and accepts evils that He does not choose: see note 58, above. We rightly “play God” in bringing about death when we compassionately choose not to provide extraordinary treatment to sustain life, not when we choose out of compassionate feelings to kill.

Rahner, On the Theology of Death, unfortunately fails to make the necessary distinctions and says (p. 119) that for the martyr, death “has been in itself the object of free decision” and “death is loved for its own sake”; and concludes (p. 120): “In Christian martyrdom, it is death itself that is the theme. Death is not something which is merely accepted, since it has been a stubbornly pursued goal, but it is something that is loved in itself, a sharing in our Lord's death, the blessed gate of eternal life.” Thus, Rahner, mistakenly supposing that martyrs’ intentions are defined by their emotional attitudes and by their reasons for gladly accepting death, neglects to ask whether typical Christian martyrs choose to kill themselves or have dying in view as an intermediate or ultimate end in choosing something else. Moreover, with a conception of human freedom influenced by Heidegger, Rahner thinks of the martyr's death as a sort of paradigmatic thematization of a sound fundamental option (see pp. 89-104) and supposes that for this reason such a death must be voluntary in the strongest possible sense: not accepted as a side effect but wholeheartedly chosen (see pp. 104-118). Though Rahner does not say so, that would mean that martyrdom is a type of suicide. Following logically enough from Rahner's theory, that conclusion manifests the theory's unsoundness.

St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans, 4,1.

The same must be said of the death of Razis (see 2 Mac 14.37-46). By contrast, Eleazar's heroic death (see 1 Mac 6.43-46) plainly was not suicide but only a foreseen and freely accepted side effect of effective defensive military action against an enemy.

Luke 2.41-52 portrays Jesus at twelve already clear about what He was to do, and doing it.

See Grisez, Christian Moral Principles, pp. 532–42, 553-55, 791-93.

See Grisez, Christian Moral Principles, pp. 732–33, and the passages referred to therein.

For example, the verse, “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” (Lk 12.50), seems to say that Jesus intends His death rather than only accepts it. But the very next verse, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” (Lk 12.51), even more clearly seems to say that Jesus intends to bring about division rather than only accepts inevitable conflict between people who will accept His teaching and those who will reject it. Yet Jesus certainly intends only that people accept His teaching and be reconciled with God — and so with one another. Therefore, the previous verse need not be taken to mean that Jesus intends His death.

Xavier Léon-Dufour, Life and Death in the New Testament: The Teachings of Jesus and Paul, trans. Terrence Prendergast (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), pp. 276–78 (his emphasis).

Cf. Life and Death in the New Testament: The Teachings of Jesus and Paul, 89–117.

What about those who cannot cooperate with Jesus and receive holy communion? Jesus’ mediation is the only way for fallen humans to be saved (see 1 Tm 2.4-5), and He not only makes His saving action available in the sacraments but teaches that they are necessary for salvation (see Jn 2.5, 6.53-58). Those who, having heard that teaching, fail to heed it reject all that God offers in Jesus. But those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to respond to that teaching nevertheless can be made participants in Jesus’ saving work and its fruits by the Holy Spirit's action; see Grisez , Christian Moral Principles, pp. 743–45.