The reports from Canada are particularly disturbing. “Medical Assistance in Dying” is the term used there—MAiD it is called—and in the few years since the Canadian supreme court found a fundamental right to demand medical assistance with one’s death, the numbers have ballooned. MAiD has become another “treatment” option that can be offered—and it is offered, according to reports, even without being requested. As in: You could have surgery (though it might take months before we can schedule you); we could request some home assistance (but ditto regarding the timeline); there are drugs that might alleviate your pain; and of course there’s MAiD.

But Canada is hardly unique. The number of doctor-assisted suicides and doctor-administered deaths has increased in many European countries as well (Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden). Assisted suicide is on the rise in the United States, too, where some 20 percent of our states already allow the practice. In addition, the UK just took a huge step forward in legalizing assisted suicide. 

Euthanasia is the looming frontier. What accounts for its growing acceptance? In an article in the Fall issue of National Affairs, Aaron Rothstein unpacks the “Origins of the Modern Euthanasia Movement.” He identifies the following factors: a diminished religious commitment; the patient as consumer (which emerges from the idea of “autonomy”); the growing notion that human beings are essentially minds (or, we could say, souls) that just happen to inhabit bodies and can therefore dispose of their flesh as they wish; and the loss of the old wisdom of the art of dying. Each of these is of pastoral importance, and it is incumbent upon serious pastors to address them as best they can.

* * *

The first story I recall hearing was told to me by an elegant older woman living in New York City. It was pre-Covid. She had had a friend of long-standing in California whom she recently visited. It turned out, though, that this visit would be her last. Shortly after the woman returned to New York, she learned that her friend had terminated her life, that she had been secretly planning her death even during their visit. The woman was relating her sadness and her anger—not so much at her friend but at the whole situation. She was angry that such a thing was legally possible. I had known for decades that anger is a typical reaction to the suicide of those who take their lives the old-fashioned way, that is, without medical assistance. The people left behind feel cheated, betrayed, diminished in importance. They acknowledge that the person had been suffering. Yet, nonetheless, they feel they should have had the chance to stick with their friend, to be present, to share in their suffering.

This woman’s experience is now increasingly common. People want to orchestrate their own deaths, to stage-manage their final good-byes. Such is, in effect, the desire to be self-created, to be master of our lives to the very end, to exclude from our consciousness something old and wise and now largely incomprehensible: that death is just a process of losing control over ourselves. Instead, euthanasia is happening, and one of the wounded left behind may be sitting next to you in a pew.

* * *

A religious framework aids in resistance. We should not kill ourselves because, fundamentally, we do not belong to ourselves. Hence Augustine stated that the commandment against killing means suicide is wrong; and Aquinas explained how this wrongness is a violation of two relationships: As social animals we belong to one another (i.e. autonomy cannot be the trump card), and as human creatures we belong to God. (Dante put suicides in the second circle of Hell.)

So far so clear. But lost in the mix today are the practices that constitute the art of dying. It is not just because my life is a gift of God that I should take care of it: It is that the life God has given me is a mortal life, a life that includes death, and for that reason I should learn how to die.

I do not think I have ever preached a sermon or taught a class on how to die. This, historically speaking, is very strange. As Rothstein reminds us, victorious Roman generals were admonished to remember they were mortal.  People used to die at home with friends around them. (Hospitals first came about so that we could die more comfortably, with attention to both body and soul.) With their household or friends at their bedside, the dying might confess their sins—and they might offer hope and encouragement to those who would outlive them. Such are but a few of the elements of the art of dying that we have lost.

Right here, I think, is the forward edge of the pro-life movement: the recovery of the art of dying as an important part of a human life (which is why we should not kill ourselves, or our children, or our elderly, or our sick). Let me tell you the (very small) step that I have taken. I have told my family and friends that when I am dying, I would like the Psalms to be read to me (and I have specified the Book of Common Prayer translation, new or old, as something familiar to me). Dear reader, you are hereby put on notice: When it comes to my end, if you are with me, please read aloud from the Psalms.

We need to recover the art of dying—to embrace the old wisdom of honesty in the face of our mortality. And, in truth, only we who are of biblical faith can do it. This then, in my judgment, is our current—urgent—pro-life calling.