Gulf Pine Catholic

6 Gulf Pine Catholic • January 3, 2025 I celebrated Mass at a fami- ly home on Saturday afternoon. Some twenty family gathered for the occasion in honor of their mother who had died a year earli- er and the family wanted to cele- brate her birthday with a Mass in the family home. Following the Mass, amid a selection of sandwiches, freshly buttered scones and homemade treats were served with cups of freshly brewed tea. Conversa- tions erupted from all corners of the small living room. I saw down to enjoy the treats with the young- est couple there. In fact, they had been married less than a year. Sarah was a pediatrician and studying in England to specialize in childhood lung diseases. Her husband, Stephn, was German and was both an attorney and a theologian. They have a commuting marriage. She is living in England and he is practic- ing law in Germany. There is hope that the commuting rollercoaster marriage will settle down to a more tolerable level when Sarah finishes her specialty in medicine. Their hope is to make Germany their more permanent home. But, while Stephn is fluent in both German and English, Sarah isn’t so lucky. She does not speak German. She would love to be able to learn German and yet, the thought of trying to navigate through Ger- man grammar is a daunting task for her. Specializing as a pediatrician, conversation turned to how much easier it is for children to learn another language than adults to learn it. She indicat- ed that children have what is called an “elastic” brain that allows them the facility and flexibility to learn a new language at a young age. She began to share stories from her professional work that highlighted the ability of children to learn a new language if provided with the right environ- ment. She said, “I remember working one of the eve- ning shifts at a hospital and I was going down the corridor. I saw this young child standing up in its crib and the child had a book in its hand and was fasci- nated as it turned the pages and kept discovering new things. Seeing that, really touched me and brought a sense of hope and satisfaction to my life.” “On another occasion, “ she continued, ”I was on duty in a different hospital and was visiting a child’s room. The child noticed my official badge and drew near to it; reached out their finger and began to swipe across my badge. It was so sad to see. The child thought it was a tablet that they could swipe across and it would entertain them.” “It is so sad in this day and age that parents don’t have time for their children. Parents are so busy, so preoccupied, so stressed out that they just don’t have time. Children are becoming YouTube children. Un- less you can swipe it, it does no good. Parents just hand them a tablet or iPad and let that do the teach- ing. The same is true of giving kids phones rather than stimulating their brains in more wholesome ways, especially through language.” I have a sense that when it is time for Stephn and Sarah to start their own family, they will have the same outlook and approach to raising their children. My niece is also married to a German and they are living in Germany with their three young chil- dren. Their oldest is eight years old and youngest is three years old. There are no iPads, no tablets, no YouTube available to the children. Instead, the con- versations between young and old are in both Ger- man and English. When visiting Ireland, conversa- tions are directed more toward English, except for an occasional need for an outburst of German language that is needed as a form of discipline as, audibly, it sounds more threatening and effective in German rather than English. I am always amazed at the ease with which the children can switch from German to English or visa versa. Humorist, Erma Bombeck “I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you’re both breath- less…they crash…you add a longer tail…they hit the rooftop…you pluck them out of the spout. You patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly. SEE ACROSS THE POND, PAGE 10 Swipe here! Across the Pond Father Tracey Nurses and doctors can encounter distressing im- ages as death unfolds for their patients. Those ap- proaching death may make odd bodily movements, give off stenches or emit strange groans. Perhaps they are facing metastasizing cancer that leads to a courageous fight, with recurrent episodes of pain, suffering, and sadness, followed by humble submis- sion, and eventually giving way to a lifeless corpse, mouth agape, with flies buzzing round. Where, one can ask, is the dignity in this manner of dying? Indeed, the physical aspects of dying and death can be very challenging, as we face the prospect of losing control of our bowels and bladder, our mind and autonomy. Margaux Killackey sums it up this way in an es- say: “All flesh will harden and turn to dust. If we judge from appearances, this is an ugly picture.” But she goes on to offer a key insight, namely, that by “looking beyond the physical aesthetics, we can find not only a life well-lived, but a death well- died.” So what does a “death well-died” look like? One might anticipate it would arise organical- ly out of a “life well-lived,” and that both of these would involve our continued and strengthened con- nectedness to others, including family, friends and God. A good death will typically be a communal event. Mother Teresa once lamented how “we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” To die sur- rounded by the care and support of others is to transcend our de- caying bodily existence as we are sustained in a kind of wholeness through the experience of being loved. When it comes to what a “death with dignity” should look like, Mother Teresa best de- scribed it this way: “Death with dignity is to die with grace, in the knowledge that [you] are loved.” Today, as efforts continue apace to legalize physi- cian-assisted suicide and euthanasia, flawed notions of “death with dignity” continue to enter and subvert our discussions. One group in Britain pushing for assisted suicide and euthanasia calls itself the “Campaign for Digni- ty in Dying.” But suicide is never dignified, no mat- ter how much we repackage it by passing laws that grant doctors and nurses immunity from prosecution as they dole out death in place of healing. These legislative maneuvers provide profession- al and legal cover for patient abandonment. Physi- cian-assisted suicide and euthanasia are quicker, easier and cheaper than remaining vigilant at the bedside, holding a sick person’s hand, and accompa- nying him or her through the twists and turns of their final journey home. Canadian euthanasia data from Québec for 2022-2023 indicate that 70 percent of those choos- ing euthanasia listed “loss of dignity” as one of the motivations. We are being cajoled as a society into believing the contradiction that “death with dignity” means killing ourselves, or letting someone else kill us. SEE MAKING SENSE OUT OF BIOETHICS, PAGE 10 Making Sense Out of Bioethics Fr. Pacholczyk Getting “death with dignity” right