Dying people don’t always look to pastors for comfort, panelists say
By Evan Silverstein, Presbyterian News Service, October 12, 2000
TOWSON, Md. – The manner in which pastors treat death is as important as the way they deal with life, according to a panel of theologians, doctors and others gathered here recently for a consultation on end-of-life issues.
The purpose of the Oct. 5-7 pastoral meeting, sponsored by Presbyterians Pro-Life (PPL), was to encourage pastors to explore with theologians, ethicists, philosophers, medical practitioners and other ministers the pastoral role of the Christian church in responding to the needs of the seriously ill and dying.
“The pastor does not always show himself as the spiritual leader in the lives of his flock,” said the Rev. Robert Fleishmann, a panelist who is national director of Christian Life Resources Inc., part of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod in Milwaukee, Wis.
“Why is that? Sometimes we get involved with our computers; sometimes we get involved with our visits.”
The conference, held at Central Presbyterian Church in Towson near Baltimore, featured a panel of about 18 representatives from the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist and Episcopalian denominations. Their host, the PPL, is an independent, non-profit corporation made up of members and pastors of the Presbyterian Church (USA), whose commitment ranges from strengthening the bonds of family love to protecting innocent life, according to the group’s World Wide Web site.
A Gallup poll in 1998 found that only one-third of respondents regarded clergy as capable of providing the comfort and help needed at the end of one’s life. A large percentage of those under 25 years old expressed concern about being forgiven by God or being cut off from God. People nearing death most often seek support from friends and family, but the Gallup pollsters concluded that families of dying people also need support and teaching from the church.
At a time when people have to make serious moral decisions about themselves and their loved ones, pastors are finding themselves playing a diminished role in providing spiritual and emotional support and spiritual direction, Fleischmann said.
“The problem is, if pastors don’t begin to take the spiritual initiative and the spiritual leadership in that capacity, they’re not seen as players; they’re seen as bystanders,” he said. “The sad reality is that there just seems to be a lack of reinforcement” of what “is really the final authority about life and death – namely the word of God.”
Terry Schlossberg, PPL’s executive director, agreed.
“We in the church ought to be concerned that the attitudes and decisions, even of church-goers, are shaped more by an unbelieving culture than the preaching and teaching emphasis of the church,” Schlossberg told participants on the consultation’s first night.
Ethical concerns related to how long medical treatment should be continued and when decisions cross the line from moral to immoral also were debated. As families agonize over tough decisions, often involving the issue of evoking death, they may get “priestly” counsel only from medical personnel. Churches are often at the far edges of counsel and care, some panel members agreed.
“I think it depends on what the motivation is,” panelist Dr. Margaret Cottle said when asked whether a terminally ill patient should be allowed to decide whether to terminate his or her life to alleviate the suffering of loved ones around them. “If the motivation for stopping whatever is happening is to (simply) bring death, then I think it is not justifiable,” said Cottle, a palliative-care specialist from Canada, who has presented numerous workshops on integrating faith and care for the terminally ill.
“If what you come to is the point where nothing is working anymore and you are prolonging dying, rather than prolonging living, that’s one thing,” she said.
Allowing a person to die is sometimes permissible, but only under specific circumstances, said J. Budziszewski, a political theorist and associate professor in the Department of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas.
“This does not mean that humane care, such as washing or feeding, may be withheld or withdrawn,” Budziszewski said. “It does mean that under certain conditions, a particular medical treatment may be withheld or withdrawn.”
Budziszewski said four conditions must be satisfied before withholding or withdrawing a medical treatment: the patient is dying; death is imminent; the medical treatment is of an extraordinary nature; and the patient’s death in not directly the goal of withholding or withdrawing treatment, but merely one possible result.
The Rev. James R. Edwards, a PC(USA) minister and professor of religion at Whitworth College in Spokane, Wash., said with regard to the prolongation of life, “It means that I am free to relinquish my life to God as creator and redeemer, when all further medical and technical support have no effect other than postponing the inevitability of death.”
Edwards, speaking of euthanasia, called the application of procedures or the withholding of procedures in order to end life or assist death “a moral evil.”
“By playing the role of lord over life, rather than performing the service of being a steward of life,” he said, “(is) a presumption against the sovereignty of God.”