When Polimom’s aunt was diagnosed with a rare lung disease, her doctors informed her that it was terminal. Her lungs would slowly ossify, and eventually she would be unable to draw enough oxygen into her system to stand, function, or take care of herself.
She called her family — all two of us — to discuss the situation, and her feelings about the end of her life. She had, she said, contacted the Hemlock Society; she wanted to die at home, while she was still in control of all her mental faculties, on her own terms.
Polimom was supportive of her choice, but her sister (my mother) was appalled. I suspect my mom would understand this California Cardinal (IHT):
Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony called on members of the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the U.S. Monday to beat back a proposal to legalize assisted suicide for the terminally ill in California, and accused the state legislature’s most powerful Democrat of being swept into a “culture of death.”
“Assisted suicide is totally unnecessary — not only is it against God’s law, God’s plan, we simply don’t need something like that,” Mahony said during a noon Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.
But my aunt, if she were still with us, would have objected strenuously to the Cardinal’s use of the term “we” in this context… because Mahony is suggesting that his church’s stand on this issue should therefore be the standard for everyone in the state.
She would have said that he — and all who agree with him — are free to choose, or not choose, as their hearts and minds dictate, and she would neither judge nor second guess their decisions. But their choices have no relationship to her own, or anyone else’s, circumstances… and Polimom would agree with her.
Neither I, nor my mother, nor the Cardinal of the Catholic Church, is in a position to make choices for someone else about Death — nor is it our place to stand in judgment of another. This is a shoe that can only be worn by one person; it fits no-one else.
Rather than worrying so much about how God will judge someone else’s soul, folks should perhaps spend a little more time worrying about their own.