Perfect in Weakness

I’ve loved St. Paul’s verse from 2 Corinthians since first reading it: “Power is made perfect in weakness.” I had always understood it to be about a voluntary renunciation of power, thus leading to a vulnerability that deepened our perceptions. Reading Isaac Slater’s moving and beautiful stories of the monks with dementia at the abbey (“A Good Place to Lose Your Mind,” July/August), most poignantly of Fr. Stan and his family, I now realize the true depth of St. Paul’s words. It’s the most powerful argument against voluntary assisted dying I’ve ever encountered.

Pam Connor
Belconnen, Australia

*

A Final Act of Gratitude?

I’m glad to see Commonweal devoting some space to a discussion of physician-assisted suicide (Cathleen Kaveny, “The Importance of Being a Burden,” September). I hope the article will help us think long and hard about life and joy and suffering and death for ourselves and our loved ones. My thoughts on the issue are influenced by my experience in Washington state, where I lived and worked as a nurse educator, and by my faith journey and values.

The data show that there is a small subset of those who are dying who experience what has been called “intolerable suffering” (see Timothy Quill’s research). Those people, if they have less than six months to live and reside in a state where medical support is legal, may obtain a prescription for self-administered medication that will allow them to die at a time and place of their choosing. The vast majority of those people are already enrolled in hospice care (more than 90 percent of cases in Washington state, for example). While palliative and hospice care is very helpful, for that one percent of patients, it is simply not enough. Per the 2024 Death with Dignity Report to the legislature, the top reasons that patients cite for their decision are that they are “less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable” and feel a “loss of autonomy,” followed by experiencing “loss of dignity” and “loss of control of bodily functions.” Being a “burden on family, friends/caregivers” comes in a distant fifth.

To allow physician-assisted suicide as an additional legal option to palliative care and hospice would be, in my view, a compassionate, humane, and ethical action. Thanks to our medical system, we are living longer, but the downside is that our suffering often increases. I know a devout Catholic ninety-year-old who is pretty angry at Jesus these days. Sure, she still enjoys her family and likes watching golf on TV, but she wants to be gone. She is tired of living, of the daily struggle to care for herself, of the fears about how it will end. I have seen her tears of frustration as her body keeps breaking down and her doctors try another medication. I don’t think she would choose that option, but I do think she should have the choice to end her life legally and with medical support. And I wonder about all of those who do try something on their own now, out of desperation, and end up in an emergency room with (or without) tearful loved ones.

Let’s not rule out this option for fear of a moral “slippery slope.” That hasn’t happened where it is legal. Let’s instead recognize that human life is precious and, for some, having the choice of when, where, and with whom to end it could be a final act of gratitude.

Bill Lonneman, RN
Cincinnati, Ohio

*

Nothing but a Gift

Thank you for Cathleen Kaveny’s article, which clearly addresses the issue of physician-assisted suicide as a neglected part of being “pro-life.” As a clinically trained chaplain working in hospice and in acute care, I faced the issue of what I call “vulnerability” daily. Stemming from the virtue of humility, vulnerability calls for us to suspend an often-entrenched sense of autonomy. This suspension is at the heart of engaging a new normal. 

To adapt to the process of aging, many of us have implemented survival tactics that served us well in the early and middle stages of life. However, as we begin to die—not when death is imminent, but during a typical elongated process—we automatically push back. We resist and are reluctant to accept the notion of our own decline and death. We are slow, sometimes even defiant, to the point of making it difficult for our loved ones and caregivers to provide the compassionate care and treatment we deserve per our humanity. Often, this difficulty is exacerbated by dementia or mental illness, but even the effects of those can be managed.

Vulnerability is how we come into the world. In that fragile state, one we are not fully conscious of, we are the most precious gift to the world. Our parents and loved ones experience us as nothing but a gift. Being vulnerable, completely dependent, doesn’t make us less. As adults, more conscious of our decline and eventual death, we forget our preciousness. 

Physician-assisted suicide is a way out, enabled by those who have forgotten. In my efforts to help some patients remember their own preciousness, I often remind them to recall their role as a parent. I ask them whether, in the moments when they were emotionally exhausted, sleep deprived, attending to a crying, sick, (completely dependent) infant in the middle of the night, they ever thought of their child as anything but a gift. Not surprisingly, most if not all reply with a resounding “no.” The focus is on the gift of that vulnerable person. Like the man who was robbed and left for dead in Luke’s Good Samaritan story, like Jesus in his Passion, we, too, can acknowledge our own vulnerability and remain the gift we are, created in the image and likeness of God. I pray we recall that long before we begin to decline and die.

John Mueller
Hastings, Nebr.