After experiencing exactly that sense of confusion having lost their spouses, a group of Palmerston North women created a free-of-charge practical guide to help others through the process of the death of a loved one.

People aren't always in the right mindset for the practical tasks that follow a death, particularly if it is sudden, says one of the authors, retired nurse Judy Seccombe.

A lot to know - but little knowledge

Assuming her nursing background would stand her in good stead when her husband was diagnosed with cancer and given a short time to live, Seccombe says she is "still surprised [by] everything you had to know and do, and where to go afterwards".

Adjusting to life without a loved one after many years spent together was difficult and came with a lot of challenges, Seccombe discovered.

She managed to get through these, but later discussed her experiences with a couple of widowed friends. After comparing notes about their experiences, they decided to write a booklet to tell others what to expect and make suggestions as to what to do.

To ensure their information for the booklet was spot-on they met with field experts such as doctors, hospice nurses, GPs, paramedics and ministers.

This help form their advice about concerns such as how to prepare for loss (sudden or otherwise), who to tell, the option of creating an advanced care plan and various legal, financial and insurance requirements.

Hey everyone - now's a good time to talk!

Seccombe and her friends hope "Practicalities Around a Death" will encourage families to discuss illness, disability, death and funerals while they are still in good health.

They also hope it will encourage people to think about end-of-life care options and funeral arrangements.

It is not a religious or medical resource, nor is it "about us" Seccombe clarifies.

"It's about putting something out there that might ease other people's journey."

It includes a number of blank pages so personal notes and reminders can be recorded. "That's because when you've got somebody going through an illness, you have lots of documents from hospital appointments and other things you need to write down" she says.

It's a resource for everyone. It allows people to understand that everyone's response to death is intensely personal, so the way they handle it is up to them. It's not a matter for others to sit in judgement.

How to get a copy

The group hope to distribute "Practicalities Around A Death" to as many places as possible.

After receiving financial assistance from the Justice-Compassion Trust Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pathways Presbyterian Church, they printed 4000 copies.

Contact Pathways Presbyterian Church on Church St: 06 358 0884 or pathways@inspire.net.nz for a copy.

Source

• The Post

Why? "It's about being vulnerable — if I tell you that I love you and you don't love me back."

In 30 years working in hospices and hospitals as a palliative care doctor, Mannix has seen love and death at close quarters.

Many people at the "edge of life, not everybody but a lot, have reached a place [where] they get what [life's] all about, it's much bigger than stuff and reputation.

It all comes down to self-worth and realising the worth of other people . . .

There's a danger that we leave it to the last moments and wait for the Hollywood last awakening where the person wakes up and [says], ‘I loved you all along.' And that doesn't happen . . . Lots of people [feel] very disappointed."

Since retiring in 2016 as a consultant in palliative medicine, and regional lead in the North East and North Cumbria for palliative and end-of-life care, Mannix has made it her mission to talk about death and dying, encouraging people to have meaningful conversations about last wishes and love before it is too late.

The success of her 2017 book With the End in Mind has given her a platform.

"By encountering death many thousands of times," she wrote, "I have come to a view that there is usually little to fear and much to prepare for. Sadly, I regularly meet patients and families who believe the opposite: that death is dreadful, and talking about it or preparing for it will be unbearably sad or frightening."

I wanted to talk to Mannix because her experience seems important as countries across Europe consider legislation on assisted dying.

France, Ireland, Scotland and the UK crown dependencies of Jersey and the Isle of Man may follow Switzerland and the Netherlands in permitting it in various forms, while Sir Keir Starmer, leader of Britain's Labour party, campaigning to win the general election on July 4, has said members of parliament will have a free vote on the matter.

We can't keep doing this one family at a time.

I arrive early for lunch at Six Rooftop, the glass-walled restaurant in the Baltic, Gateshead's cultural centre.

Shaking out my wet coat, I feel relieved that we didn't go with our original plan to meet for fish and chips on the Northumberland coast.

Outside, the sky is grey, a brooding backdrop for a conversation about death.

If the interview was filmed, I'd worry that the inclement weather was too crassly symbolic.

Mannix joins me at the table, pointing out the kittiwakes flying over the Tyne.

"I'm sorry that we're looking down the river in the rain because it's beautiful on a lovely day."

This restaurant has happy connotations for Mannix as the venue for various reunions with her year from Newcastle University Medical School, where she also met her husband.

Nonetheless, the 65-year-old former consultant and psychotherapist, dressed in mauve and grey, seems trepidatious, still not used to being the one holding forth rather than doing the listening.

Mannix has the soothing voice of an empathetic doctor though occasionally I strain to hear her over the hubbub of a Bank Holiday weekend.

Is it depressing to be around so much death?

"Look how miserable I am," she smiles, relaxing.

On the good days, her job provided the "best feeling in the world, you really make a difference at a point in [a patient's] life when that really matters.

"You're giving them their comfort back.

"The highs are high and the lows are low . . . You are meeting [people] who are sorrowful, but they are not only sorrowful."

Death dispenses with social conventions.

"There's something about people's attitude to the world and other people when there are no boundaries left that you've got to observe; they are the released version of who they've always been . . . and most people are naturally nice . . . there's a softness."

It was the case of a man brought into hospital with a long medical history that spurred Mannix's decision to start campaigning.

His two adult sons felt clueless about his final wishes because they had avoided their father's gentle cues to talk about his eventual death, wanting to chivvy rather than depress him.

"They just missed the hope of having that conversation with their dad because they thought they were going to be discussing something that was unbearable to talk about."

What bothered her was not that their story was remarkable, but that it was so commonplace.

"I [would] just wake up in the middle of the night thinking, ‘We can't keep doing this one family at a time. We can't keep [waiting] for the palliative care team to have a conversation about dying.'"

Improvements in medicine over the 20th century had the unfortunate byproduct, Mannix says, of shielding people from death.

"There's still a 100 per cent death rate and we need to think about when the dying can't be stopped.

"What can we do that enables it to be comfortable?"

Ignorance about death and dying, she says, is "a massive societal problem".

By raising public understanding, she hopes "that when doctors and nurses do try to have those conversations, they're talking to people who've got a few pegs to hang the ideas on".Continue reading

I asked this peculiar question to my two children after reading about "grief tech," the latest wonder child of artificial intelligence that allows the living to remain digitally connected to the dead through "ghostbots."

I explained to our children that they could feed our texts and emails to an A.I. platform that would create chatbots that mimic our language and tone and could respond to them through text after our death.

Although the idea of death made them shudder, their response was immediate and firm: "We don't want an A.I. mommy and daddy. It wouldn't be real."

Grief tech

Like our children, I have had a visceral response to the burgeoning realm of grief tech.

As an attorney and a graduate student of theology, I could not help but envisage the intersections of law, theology and ethics.

And as a Catholic woman who has experienced profound loss and grief in four consecutive miscarriages, these glaring intersections were heightened within my body.

On a cerebral and bodily level, I found myself grappling with what personhood means in relation to grief tech.

With the creation of A.I., anthropomorphised chatbots are one critical example of how the rapidly advancing technology is testing the limits of the human condition.

At this critical juncture, it is important for us, as people of faith and goodwill, to probe A.I.'s potential to divorce us from our humanity.

Grief tech is raising significant issues that bear on what it means to be human, specifically implicating our embodiment, relationality, finitude and death.

Not only does grief tech try to divorce the human body from any concept of personhood, but grief tech's endeavor to immortalise A.I. creations of the deceased stands in opposition to the Christian understanding of death.

Technology does not simply advance without the sanctioning of human beings.

While human existence is vulnerable to grief and death, we must affirm the body as intrinsic to our humanity and to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through which we enter into relationship with God, ourselves and one another.

Our theological tradition—and specifically the work of Karl Rahner and Tina Beattie—can help us reflect on these imperatives and how they play out in the future.

The spectre of grief tech

A.I. has emerged within the last two years as a formidable instrument of communication and relationship in various arenas.

Large language models (L.L.M.s), a particular form of generative A.I., have facilitated this transition, with L.L.M.s that have been trained using volumes of data acquiring the extraordinary capability to mimic human beings through language.

L.L.M.s are not sentient, but their neural networks enable them to generate lifelike responses that can feel real to actual human beings.

One nascent industry that has capitalised on L.L.M.s is grief tech.

"Death is a lucrative business," wrote Mihika Agarwal in Vox late last year, and grief tech seeks to console the living through apps and programs that "re-create the essence of the deceased."

As intimated by the question to my two children, ghostbots are a distinct version of grief tech.

Through the power of A.I., we can build ghostbots out of the dead using the data—texts, emails, voice conversations, etc.—of our deceased loved ones.

Once L.L.M.s are fed this data, companies like Open A.I., Séance A.I. and You, Only Virtual can generate ghostbots that immortalise the deceased through text-based chat.

Although ghostbots cannot think, feel or have bodily form, their words offer a semblance of humanity by imitating the language of our dearly departed.

Although grief tech is still in its initial phase, it has already transformed the way we grieve.

At the touch of an app, we can quickly comfort ourselves by interacting with ghostbots, short-circuiting the traditional way of grieving.

We can easily download a relationship rather than accept our reality and sit with our loss and pain.

Death loses its sense of finality, emboldening us to maintain relationships even beyond the grave.

The dead may be physically gone, but they can now "‘live' on our everyday devices," wrote Aimee Pearcy in The Guardian last year, buried "in our pockets—where they wait patiently to be conjured into life with the swipe of a finger."

The concreteness of human existence

Ghostbots may bring comfort and closure to the living, but grief tech raises serious issues.

At the outset, there is the risk that users will become emotionally or psychologically dependent on ghostbots due, in part, to their instant accessibility and our ability to imbue them with familiarity and meaning.

Ghostbots may feel real to us, but they cannot supplant healthy, concrete relationships with other human beings.

Entangled with this psychological risk are ethical and legal concerns.

While some companies tout "Do Not Bot Me" clauses and "Digital Do Not Reanimate" orders to prohibit individuals from turning others into ghostbots without their permission, not all grief tech apps and programs require the deceased's consent before they die.

Further, even with these possible legal protections, there remains the issue of enforcement, exacerbated by the fact that we are constantly exchanging photos, texts and emails daily.

We retain the data of others on our digital devices, and no federal law prevents us from building bots out of the dead or the living.

Our legal system's present inability to protect the humanity of the deceased accentuates the final ethical concern of instrumentalisation.

Through generative A.I., we now have the capacity to reduce our deceased loved ones to digital instruments for maintaining relationship.

With their data at our disposal, we can distill their human "essence" and contain it in eternal ghostbots that respond to us 24/7.

Whether the app or program is free or not, grief tech companies are all too willing to monetise the dead as a service to help grieving individuals.

Our dearly departed are resurrected as a technological means of support, one that can comfort us while avoiding the realities of the human body and death.

However, rather than being swept up by A.I.'s wave of "inevitability" as the only future awaiting us, people of faith can demand that we not blithely surrender our humanity to technology.

We must get to the heart of the matter and articulate a philosophical and theological anthropology that respects the concreteness and finality of human existence.

We must do this if we are to challenge grief tech's subterfuge of artificial intimacy as authentic relationship.

What does it mean to be human?

The Christian Scriptures reveal the body as constitutive of the human person. In the Book of Genesis, we are told humans are created in the imago Dei, the image and likeness of God (1:27).

Our inviolable dignity is intrinsic to our bodies, which radiate our imago Dei and particular uniqueness as individuals.

There is no Cartesian separation or Manichean division of our being. To paraphrase the theologian Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, we are our bodies, and the human body is good.

In the Gospels, "the flesh in its dignity" is affirmed and glorified in Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son of God.

As Moltmann-Wendel notes, the life of Jesus is about "God's becoming body."

Jesus enters our world through the body of Mary, "begotten rather than fabricated," and his words and actions touch "human beings in their totality, in their bodies."

According to Moltmann-Wendel, we see the totality of human beings most vividly in Jesus' encounter with the woman who bled for 12 unrelenting years (Mk 5:25-34).

After she touches his clothes, grasping Jesus in his bodily nature, the healing between them is body to body.

She is immediately filled with his power and made whole; and he, though experiencing a flowing out of his power, remains whole (v. 29-30).

Through the woman and Jesus, we discover how, as Motlmann-Wendel claims, "God encounters us in the human body," inviting us into communion with him.

In a similar way, the Catholic theologian Margaret A. Farley, R.S.M., illuminates our concrete reality as human beings through her formulation of a sexual ethics that is germane to all human relationships.

In Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, she offers a vision of the human person as an "embodied spirit" or "inspirited body" whom God invites to a destiny of relationship and wholeness.

Crucial to Farley's vision are two obligating features of personhood: autonomy and relationality.

In our autonomy, we can decide our own destiny, and in our relationships, we recognise the intrinsic value of others and our dependency upon them.

Consequently, autonomy and relationality "ground an obligation to respect persons as ends in themselves and forbid, therefore, the use of persons as mere means" (emphasis in the original).

When we instrumentalise others, we violate their autonomy and foreclose the possibility of authentic relationship.

A "just love," then, is true and good insofar as it affirms and respects the concrete reality of the beloved. It proclaims, in word and deed, that "I want you to be, and to be full and firm in being."

In contrast to the anthropologies of Moltmann-Wendel and Farley, grief tech abolishes the human body.

When we encounter one another as persons, we do not meet as diaphanous spirits but as embodied spirits, inspirited bodies, radiating the imago Dei.

Each person is an "incarnate singularity," to use the language of Roberto Dell'Oro in his 2022 article in the Journal of Moral Theology, "Can a Robot Be a Person?"

Each person is unique and possesses an unrepeatable history; our body is inseparable from our destiny; and despite death, we do not lose our humanity.

However, through the power of A.I., grief tech has ruptured what it means to be human.

Death's finality presents grief tech with the lucrative opportunity to discard the body and profit from our loss and pain.

Through ghostbots, companies offer grieving individuals the promise of eternal relationship with the dead.

This promise is destructive and deceptive, divorcing our deceased loved ones from their bodies and extracting an "essence" from their data that fails to capture and affirm the totality of their human existence.

Ghostbots can neither experience nor embody what the deceased loved, what they valued and what they lived for.

Instead, the deceased are reduced to a "stable static entity," to use Agarwal's words.

This "stable static entity" is the antithesis of the complex, dynamic person who is loved by God and birthed into the world.

They are essentialised and homogenised. By dispensing with the human body, the deceased can now be objectified as digital instruments for relationship.

The relationship that grief tech offers is an artificial intimacy that can never replicate the dynamics of human relationship.

A.I. has no relationship with itself and must be programmed to create what human beings intend.

In order to generate ghostbots then, we must feed L.L.M.s the data of the deceased, specifically their words that we want to hear.

We must create the A.I. image of the deceased that we want, with or without their consent.

Thus, what emerges from this interaction is not a two-sided, dynamic relationship between two distinct persons but a one-sided, static relationship with ourselves vis-à-vis a ghostbot.

This is a relationship that we imbue with meaning by using the dead as a means to comfort and console us. It is not just love.

Ultimately, grief tech's flight from the body creates an illusion. When we fail to respect the body, we fail to respect persons as ends in themselves. When we fail to see the body, we fail to see God.

Karl Rahner, Tina Beattie and life through death

Even in death, the human body remains a key element in one's own history.

The flesh, created in the image and likeness of God, is still destined for God and summoned to glory by God.

We cannot deny the vulnerability and finality of the human condition, but we must also recognise how life emerges by way of death in the body story of Jesus.

In the cross, our bodies hold the promise of redemption through Jesus, the "first born from the dead" (Col 1:19).

The theologians Tina Beattie and Karl Rahner can help parse this crucial notion in Christian theology.

Unlike the founder of You, Only Virtual, who wishes to end goodbyes and the human emotion of grief, the theologian Tina Beattie invites us to "befrien[d] death" through the mystery of the Incarnation.

Although death is certain for each one of us, it is also a mystery exempt from human control.

We tend to perceive it as "a mortal enemy," a specter lurking in the shadows until we are forced to confront its undeniable reality.

Beattie recognises our fear but points to the hope embodied in Christian anthropology, which offers a paradoxical view of death as a rebirth and a beginning:

"The death of Christ tells us that God, like us, is vulnerable to love's wounding and sorrow, but the resurrection of Christ whispers of a God whose dying is fecundity," she writes in her book New Catholic Feminism: Theology and Theory.

Karl Rahner develops this theme of life through death in his book, On the Theology of Death.

He emphasises how death is the universal event that strikes us in our totality as human persons, but cautions that we should not regard death as a pointless suffering nor as a phantom waiting to strike.

Although death remains a great mystery, faith illuminates its truth in the death of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, "became consubstantial with us" and "died our death."

According to Rahner, the real miracle of Christ's death is that death was transformed into life, with the "flesh of sin" transformed into the "flesh of grace."

Death is a consequence of sin, and only in Christ's death could death usher in God's arrival in the final moment of our life when we feel most abandoned by God.

In that moment, sin's power reaches its apex but God's grace overpowers sin.

Consequently, death becomes "the highest act of believing, hoping, and loving," a "faith in darkness, hope against hope, and love of God who only appears as Lord and as inexorable justice."

Through Jesus' death, God's grace becomes ours.

Thus, Rahner invites us to "hearken to the gospel of death, which is life."

Although the natural order of life ends in death, he challenges the dominant view of death as merely a natural process divorced from our spiritual, supernatural existence of grace.

Contrary to Martin Heidegger's notion that human beings are "being-towards-death," moving in life toward death and shaped by its reality, Rahner believes we are being-towards-glory.

From the very beginning of our life, we are not oriented toward death but toward the glory of God, and death is not the end of our existence but the beginning of eternity with God.

This involves the affirmation and fulfillment of the human person through a glorifying change in which the body remains whole. In the glorious grace of Christ's death, we will not perish at death but will be transformed in the resurrection of the body.

In contrast to the Christian anthropology of death presented by Beattie and Rahner, grief tech exploits our fear by offering a semblance of human control over death.

This control is illusory and, to quote Rahner, only "degrades [our] anxiety before death to a mere expression of self-preservation."

We end up trying to extend the finite limits of our own lives by controlling our loved ones in death.

Grief tech cannot alleviate our fear of death, but only pushes us to eternalise the essentialisation of human persons through ghostbots.

Such an attempt perpetuates an artificial intimacy that can never replicate authentic relationship.

Emboldened by A.I. and without the constraints of the law, we can resurrect the dead in our own image and, as a result, the dead cannot rest in peace.

A.I.'s attempt to control or circumvent death diminishes the humanity of the deceased.

Instead of offering immortality, grief tech offers perpetual mortality that can neither capture the totality of our deceased loved ones as human persons nor comprehend the ultimate glory of the body or eternity with God.

The proponents of grief tech are unable to imagine how death could lead to wondrous new life and new relationship with God and one another.

Life after ghostbots

We are our bodies, and our bodies are inextricably tied to our relationship with God, ourselves and one another.

We are not data or digital instruments to be used and manipulated, in life or in death. Furthermore, we must not abandon the human body to try to conquer death.

Though our life in the world will eventually cease, death is not the end of who we are.

We, as human persons, are destined for God, in our beginning and in our end.

The human body is a promise for glory, and Jesus Christ proclaims who we are in his life, death and resurrection.

Despite grief tech's promise to console us through eternal ghostbots, we cannot surrender our humanity for an artificial intimacy divorced from concrete reality.

With the rapid advancement of generative A.I., what is at stake is us.

We are unique persons created and loved by God whose totality cannot be distilled by technology.

Ghostbots are a deformation of the human person, and we must draw the line between the real and the virtual, the authentic and the counterfeit.

• First published in America magazine
• Eryn Reyes Leong is an attorney, pursuing a master of theology degree at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Calif.

He would use her nickname, "Toots," or ask, "Hey, babe, how's your morning going?"

"I would give anything to hear that again," Rowell said.

But interacting with a version of a departed loved one is now more accessible than ever, thanks to generative language models such as ChatGPT.

Trained on a deceased relative's words — from a digital journal, videos or other content — a chatbot can reply to a prompt or question from a survivor with what it predicts the relative would say.

This might sound like the episode of the science-fiction series "Black Mirror" that explored a woman's use of technology to create a virtual version of her dead boyfriend, with disturbing implications.

But this is the very real way technology is helping people deal — or maybe not deal — with death.

Funeral homes are already adding AI powered obituary-writing services to the digital memorial webpages they create.

An interactive app, HereAfter AI, lets a user preserve photos and memories for family members to access after the user has died.

The Project December website offers to "simulate the dead" in a text-based conversation with anyone, "including someone who is no longer living."

In 2020, reality TV star Kim Kardashian even famously received a hologram of her late father wishing her a happy 40th birthday, a gift from her now ex-husband, rapper Kanye West.

Rowell, however, is unlikely to pursue any similar avenues.

"I don't think it would do me any good," said Rowell, who teaches the psychology of grief class in the mortuary science program at the University of Minnesota's medical school. "I think that it would open up a wound that at least has a pretty good cover on it."

The potential for new technology to intersect with age-old bereavement practices is growing nonetheless.

Rowell and others have advice on what to consider in creating a "chatbot of the dead."

Remember dignity, respect

Michael LuBrant, director of the U's mortuary science program, said the impulse to create a way to communicate with the dearly departed is part of human nature.

"There's no question that the idea of having ways to remember and memorialize and connect is, I think, something that's wired into our DNA," LuBrant said.

LuBrant, however, urges caution to families and funeral homes regarding chatbots. One concern is the degree to which survivors or others define the legacy of someone who has died.

"To what extent is any service offering that I would present to a survivor's next of kin, something that one would argue would demonstrate the highest degree of respect, dignity and concern for that individual who died in honouring their wishes and the wishes of the next of kin?" LuBrant said.

Curtis Funk, CEO of Tukios, a Utah-based software company serving funeral homes in Minnesota and across the country, said they would need roughly a month to complete a chatbot.

Tukios already offers an AI powered obituary writer and a content moderation tool for online guestbooks.

"People would love it, the way they listen to voice mails after someone's passed away or watch videos just to hear their voice," Funk said of such a chatbot.

"We're open-minded to building that into our suite."

But family members should decide whether to have a chatbot created and collect the content that goes into it.

"I don't think anything like that should ever be done without the family's approval," Funk said. "I think funeral directors all feel the same way." Continue reading

Reports say she woke up in her coffin and knocked on the lid, when it was open, relatives were stunned to find her alive and gasping for breath.

"I lifted up the coffin, and her heart was pounding, and her left hand was hitting the coffin… We called 911 to bring her here to the hospital," her son Gilberto Barbera said in a video posted on social media.

However, after spending seven days in ICU she died. Read more

Creating a space to talk about death is the aim of the group, says facilitator Aingie Miller, who wants to take the discomfort out of conversations.

"I believe that the more that we talk about death, the more comfortable we become."

Describing New Zealand as a "death denial country", Miller says talking helps people feel prepared for their own death or somebody close to them.

The Death Cafe movement was established in the UK by Jon Underwood in 2011, with the movement spreading to 85 countries.

Underwood was inspired by his Buddhist beliefs and the Swiss cafe mortel movement to create spaces to talk about death and dying. Read more

California's governor on Sunday signed a bill allowing the process of converting bodies into soil.

Despite opposition from the State's Catholic bishops, the law will take effect in 2027

At present, burial, cremation and alkaline hydrolysis are the only death-care choices available in the Golden State.

Otherwise known as natural organic reduction, human composting targets "individuals who want a different method to honour their remains after death".

The state of Washington legalised the process in 2019. Colorado was the second state to legalise it, followed by Oregon and Vermont.

Human composting is seen as a more sustainable alternative to cremation which requires fossil fuels and releases carbon dioxide.

In the human composting method, a body is placed in a reusable vessel, covered with wood chips and aerated. This creates an environment for microbes and essential bacteria. The body, over a span of about 30 days, is fully transformed into soil.

Kathleen Domingo, executive director for the California Catholic Conference, said the process "reduces the human body to simply a disposable commodity".

In June this year, the California Catholic Conference submitted a letter of opposition in reaction to the bill.

In the letter, Domingo likened natural organic reduction to methods of disposal of livestock.

Using this method "can create an unfortunate spiritual, emotional and psychological distancing from the deceased," she wrote.

In New York, where a similar bill awaits the governor's signature, the New York State Catholic Conference is also concerned.

In a statement the Conference said composting human remains is inappropriate.

Acknowledging the variety of beliefs concerning "the reverent and respectful treatment of human remains," the Conference submitted: "We believe there are a great many New Yorkers who would be uncomfortable at best with this proposed composting/fertilising method..."

The process was "more appropriate for vegetable trimmings and eggshells than for human bodies" the Conference wrote.

In California, the massive number of COVID-19 deaths inundated funeral homes. This led to Los Angeles County's suspension of air quality regulations on cremation.

Democrat State Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, who introduced the legislation, said it was another "sad reminder" of the need to offer a "more environmentally friendly option.

"I look forward to continuing my legacy to fight for clean air by using my reduced remains to plant a tree," Garcia said after the Governor signed the bill.

Death-care specialists say the new, environmentally friendly procedure is crucial. Cemeteries are filling up and people are looking for more sustainable practices.

Under the California bill, the soil created by the human composting method could be used on private land with permission.

It would be subject to the same restrictions as scattering cremated remains in the State.

The bill also prohibits human remains from being "commingled with those of another person," unless they are family.

Source

• Religion News Service

Their differing views of happiness had moved them farther and farther apart until they lost all contact with each other to the loss of both since there were no longer any Enting offspring.

"We believe that we may meet again in a time to come, and perhaps we shall find somewhere a land where we can live together and both be content," Treebeard says.

"But it is foreboded that that will only be when we have both lost all that we now have. And it may well be that that time is drawing near at last."

In many parts of Christendom, the same story is being re-enacted. Differing views of what the Church can and must be are driving people farther and farther apart.

Among the managers of the Catholic part of the Church, there are not a few who seem determined to drive away anyone who looks anew at old moral positions (especially those related to sex).

Those new thinkers generally believe that Christianity is not about morality, but is a living and growing relationship with God in Jesus Christ that is the foundation and norm for morality.

Traditionalists move farther and farther from the mainstream, in some cases going so far as to question the authority and even the orthodoxy of the pope.

Others, fed up with scandals, cover-ups, closed-mindedness, clericalism, irrelevance and refusal to accept the working of the Holy Spirit in Vatican 2 and the People of God, simply withdraw from involvement.

Is it possible that "we may meet again in a time to come, and perhaps we shall find somewhere a land where we can live together and both be content"?

Well, nothing is impossible with God. However, the rest of Treebeard's words may say something important about how God achieves the impossible: "that will only be when we have both lost all that we now have."

When we look at the history of the divine relationship with God's people, we tend to overlook the middle of the process.

We see Moses lead the Hebrews out of Egypt and through the miraculously opened sea.

Then, we jump ahead to the Promised Land as if there were not a period of 40 years of wandering in the desert (looking, as some Israelis quip, for the one place in the Middle East without oil). Egypt ends, but the Promised Land does not begin until after the long period of nothing when those who came out of Egypt are dead.

Or look at our Sacred Triduum. We mark Good Friday by hearing the account of the Passion and we venerate the Cross. Then, we jump ahead to Easter, using Holy Saturday as a day to decorate the church for the Vigil and Sunday. We forget the tomb.

But what if the 40 years in the desert and Jesus' time in the tomb are actually key events in God's bringing about something new?

Can it be that actually being dead, being nothing, is the means by which God prepares us for something truly new, whether it be a promised land or new life?

It is increasingly obvious that parts, at least, of the Church are in Good Friday mode, undergoing a painful and confusing death, a crucifixion.

Attempts are made to hide from the situation or mitigate it by developing some sort of rubber nails. They are already failing.

Death increasingly appears inevitable, and attempts to forestall it may in fact be contrary to the will of God who may have something totally new in store for us.

But that unimaginable something will, like the Promised Land or the Resurrection, come through death, the end of what was.

And not just dying. It will come from being dead. There will be no shortcut from the cross we live with now to a new life. All shall be cleared away.

What will being dead look like? What will it feel like? What shall we do while the Church is dead?

During the centuries when Christianity was banned in Japan and being found out as a Christian meant torture and death, Christians had no clergy, no hierarchy, no facilities, no guidance and no contact with other communities.

The Church was dead.

The only thing those Christians had was their commitment to each other.

Violating that commitment would bring them rewards from the persecutors. Yet, believers remained faithful to one another and to their understanding of Christ.

Instead of attempting to thwart what may be God's will by postponing the dying, we should concentrate on building communities of mutual support that can define themselves by faithfulness not to forms but to Christ and one another.

As Treebeard said, "it may well be that that time is drawing near at last."

• William Grimm is a missioner and presbyter in Tokyo and is the publisher of the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News).
• Republished with permission.

Honcharuk describes life in his diocese at the moment.

Could you describe the situation in your diocese, which has become the main theatre of this terrible war?

Our Church is alive and active!

Priests and faithful are in their places, and prayer continues to flow, as does the daily liturgy in parishes.

More in some than in others, depending on the location: where war activities are going on, or territories are occupied, there is no such possibility. Yet our Church serves the people, the elderly, and children, as well as helping our soldiers who defend our homeland.

How do you feel in this fifth month of the war?

The first shock is over; now there is permanent tension.

We're constantly in anticipation, especially when there's shelling and it's unclear when and where it will hit.

The day before yesterday, it was some 1,000-1,200 meters from us, in a straight line.

Last night, the bombs hit somewhere very close to us.

I know that I will not hear the missile that strikes me. So, when I hear an explosion, it means I'm still alive.

We are prepared for sudden and unexpected death.

That means we often go to sacraments, especially confession.

It is a completely new experience, a different way of life. I get up in the morning and realise that I am alive.

In addition to that pain, suffering adds a sense of helplessness because it overwhelms you.

Evil is so great and so cynical that it topples the great of this world from their thrones.

Wars are very easy to trigger, but how to stop them?

On the other hand, there are also great signs of God's presence amid the whirlwind of war, in the hearts of people who are serving in various places as soldiers, medics, firefighters, policemen, as well as in other services.

By looking into the faces of these people, we can witness the great, divine power of love with which God inspires them.

What is the situation in Kharkiv now? Are people coming back, or have they now begun to leave again?

The situation is constantly changing.

For example, one man might come to see his apartment but immediately leave again.

In general, people are leaving because of the constant shelling in Kharkiv.

There is shelling before lunch, after lunch, and at night.

We are very close to the front line, literally twenty kilometres.

Before the war, the city of Kharkiv had a population of 1.7 million. At the moment, there are about 700,000, less than half.

But other cities in the diocese, such as Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, or Bakhmut, are very dangerous places in the actual warzone.

Practically everyone has already escaped; there are few people left in those cities.

What is everyday life like in a city under constant fire?

The situation of each family or each person is different.

If a person's house is undamaged, they have a place to live, and if they have a job, they have funds.

If the house is destroyed, the person has nowhere to live. And if they don't have a job, if their workplace has been destroyed, the person is left without funds.

And when on top of that they have been injured…

Sometimes people have only what they were wearing because everything burned down with the house.

Therefore, some people need clothes, some need shoes, medicine, or food, some just need support, and some a place to stay.

Others need someone to take their family to safety.

There are many problems and tasks ahead.

Do people have access to the things they need? Is there work?

The destruction of the city is calculated at about 15%.

This is irreparable damage.

But the city's infrastructure is working; it can withstand the strain.

Those plants and companies that can continue to work, people in them still have jobs, and some others have been completely moved to other Ukrainian cities.

Hospitals, and municipal services, which are responsible for electricity, gas, water, sewage, garbage collection, street cleaning and public transport, are still working.

It all works.

If they destroy something, in twenty-four hours, you wouldn't even know anything happened; the municipal services clean everything up and take it away.

The fire department, police, and other services are fully working too.

People try to live normally even though the war is so present in our city. Schools and universities work online.

And what about the financial situation?

Only some banks have their branches open.

Also, only certain ATMs work. For the most part, these physical locations remain closed for security reasons. But the entire financial sector is working; bank cards are working everywhere. Shops are partially open.

I was in the market yesterday - only half of it burned down.

Where stalls and kiosks survived, they are still selling there.

Cathedral of Kharkiv used as warehouse due the war.

But people can't buy anything because they don't have money. People here are not wealthy.

The wealthy left long ago, but those who live from paycheck to paycheck remain, they count every penny, and now they are in a very difficult situation.

Even from the clothes, one can see that such a person has always led a dignified life, but the war has made them poor, or homeless.

Many people have also been affected psychologically, and some began abusing alcohol.

In some cities, far from the front, people are already ignoring the air-raid alert. How about in Kharkiv, are people taking cover, or ignoring the alerts and just going about their lives?

At the beginning of the war, people reacted more when there was shelling, they generally did not come out of their basements and shelters.

Many did not come out at all, they lived there constantly, and some are still very panicked to this day.

There are streets where people hardly felt that the war is going on because it was completely quiet. And there are also neighbourhoods where everything is destroyed.

I see that most people have become braver; the tired psyche begins to suppress the sense of danger.

What is the security situation like?

People stand around and keep talking when the shelling is far away, and when the shells are heard closer, they scatter.

But when nothing happens for two or three minutes, people come out again.

The day before yesterday, a father was driving a car with his son. They had come to the city to file papers for university and were returning home.

Suddenly a shell directly hit the car. Some debris was left from the car, but their bodies were torn to pieces.

As you see, people continue to drive during the shelling, and some will make it through, and some will not.

But let's not think that people are irresponsible.

The danger lasts so long that somehow you have to learn to ignore it, but you also have to think and make decisions.

Previously, people just didn't control it: they would run away, and then they would start to think. But it is very exhausting when you have to run away ten times in a day.

People fleeing but also seeking refuge in the diocese

Some people from Kharkiv, or other frontline cities, moved to the nearest villages - to their relatives or to empty houses there. But when they saw that it didn't end, some began to go further.

Inside the country, too, you need to find a place to live and work, and there are many difficulties involved. On the other hand, going abroad means that only the wife and children can leave, and the husbands have to stay in Ukrainian territory, because of martial law.

This is a huge blow to the family, and to the spouses; it causes great suffering.

People are constantly on the move.

Some settle somewhere and get a job, and some fail.

Sometimes it seems as if people are finally settled in a new place, and suddenly they are told: "sorry, we have to ask you to leave our house".

The fate of each move is different but always difficult.

Some come back because they say it is easier for them to live under fire, in danger, than to live as refugees.

In this situation, who are you? You have no rights, you can't plan anything, you have nothing of your own.

You always feel that you are hovering over someone's head and that others are watching you too.

It is very difficult psychologically.

If someone wants to try, let them leave their home for a month, inviting themselves to another's house, then another, then a third, then a fourth, always as a guest, and moving all the time.

Working with refugees and internally displaced people?

Here in Kharkiv, we have the Marian Fathers and Caritas, they are helping displaced people, as many people who have lost their homes have come to the city.

Here, not far from the border, twenty houses in one village were wrecked yesterday.

Russian troops are simply destroying our Ukrainian villages, and then the survivors flee to the city because it is no longer possible to live there.

Displaced people from nearby villages are also coming to Kharkiv, although Kharkiv is still under shelling every day.

We also work in other places, we help by distributing humanitarian aid, things for children, food, diapers, or just being available to talk. There are such cases in Poltava, Sumy, Konotop, Dnipro, as well as in Zaporizhzhia and Pokrovsk.

• Fr Jurij Blazejewski for Aid to the Church in Need.
• Aid to the Church in Need is supporting the Catholic Church in Ukraine in its commitment to stay on the ground and keep serving its flock in the face of material and economic war.

The same TV that allowed us to join hundreds of millions of others in a collective holding of breath, wondering whether the moral arc of the universe would bend the right way, now dropped us into our own, isolated island of grief to live-stream loss in the time of Covid.

My husband's Uncle Mike died in Sydney, where he'd lived with family for the last 23 years, on Sunday November 1.

My mother-in-law, Karen, was the only New Zealand-based family member who travelled over to be with him in his last days. Mike had Down syndrome and Karen was his legal guardian.

If life doesn't come with a manual, it sure as shit doesn't come with a guide to comforting your husband as he watches his mum sit in a chair, spaced 2m apart from everyone else, attending the funeral of a man who helped shape the person he is today.

There is no WikiHow on what to do when a son can't put his arms around his mother at a time when every fibre in his grieving body is crying out to do just that.

I put my arms around him, honouring the promise I made to Karen on the phone to look after him, but I also know it's the very definition of a consolation prize.

Most cultures have evolved practices that, through the breaking of bread and the sharing of stories, pull us out of our isolation and individual grief and back into the collective experience of farewelling a loved one.

It provides a kind of temporary, full stop to the profound intensity of loss.

The service itself was lovely.

Mike was brought into the chapel to ‘Jailhouse Rock'. The Australian celebrant did an admirable job of pronouncing the Maori words sprinkled throughout the emailed tributes.

Someone did a haka and the service ended with ‘Hine e Hine', gently tethering Mike to his whanau watching in the same way we were, back in Aotearoa.

And then it ended. The room emptied out and our last act in the formal proceedings on our side of the ditch was to yank the HDMI cable out of the laptop.

At every funeral I've ever been to, necessary catharsis is often found in what my Irish-Catholic, rugby-loving family describe as the ‘after match'.

Most cultures have evolved practices that, through the breaking of bread and the sharing of stories, pull us out of our isolation and individual grief and back into the collective experience of farewelling a loved one.

It provides a kind of temporary, full stop to the profound intensity of loss. Irreverence counters reverence, jokes replace solemnity and food nourishes both body and soul.

These communal experiences ground us, reminding us of the legacy of love left behind by the person we have said goodbye to.

They exist not as frivolous excuses for a hooley but as a necessary part of moving us through to the next stage.

We are doing everything we're meant to do as players in this collective nightmare and still, we are doing it alone. Continue reading

Maori and Pacific populations are historically at greater risk of hospitalisation and death from pandemics. During the 2009 influenza pandemic, the rate of infection for Maori was twice that of Pakeha (European New Zealanders). Maori were three times more likely to be hospitalised and almost three times more likely to die.

Our results show that if COVID-19 were allowed to become more widespread in New Zealand, it would have a devastating impact on Maori and Pacific communities.

Higher risks for Maori and Pacific people

Evidence from overseas shows ethnic minority communities are at greater risk of serious health problems from COVID-19. In some parts of the US, Pacific islanders are being hospitalised at up to ten times the rate of other ethnicities. In the UK, Black and minority ethnic groups are suffering death rates twice those of White people.

Our study was based on international data on risk factors for COVID-19 fatality, including heart disease, diabetes and asthma. We combined these with data on the prevalence of these conditions in different ethnic and age groups in New Zealand.

We also accounted for the fact that Maori and Pacific people have lower life expectancy and higher unmet health-care needs than European New Zealanders.

We found the risk of death from COVID-19 was at least 50% higher for Maori. It could be more than double the rate for European New Zealanders if the level of unmet healthcare need is actually greater than official data can capture. The risk for Pacific people could also be up to double that for European New Zealanders.

One of the immediate reasons for the higher risk Maori and Pacific people face is that they have higher rates of existing health conditions. These are strongly associated with more severe outcomes from COVID-19.

Maori and Pacific populations are younger, on average, than Pakeha. But they have lower life expectancy and tend to experience health issues at a younger age. They also experience greater rates of unmet healthcare need and greater levels of poverty, which have been shown to have a significant effect on fatality rates.

For these reasons, Maori and Pacific people are also at higher risk of becoming severely ill and needing to go to hospital as a result of COVID-19. Unfortunately we are now starting to see this happen. COVID-19 cases among Maori and Pacific people have been around twice as likely as other ethnic groups to require hospitalisation.

Substandard housing contributes to higher risk

Our study looked at the risk of death only once someone has become infected with COVID-19. But there are other factors that increase the risk of getting infected for Maori and Pacific people.

A recent study from the UK showed infection rates were much higher for people living in a large household or in poorer areas, while the epidemic in China indicated that around 80% of community transmission resulted from households.

About 25% of Maori and 45% of Pacific people live in crowded housing. They are also more likely to work in jobs or workplaces with higher health risks, including infection.

COVID-19 would therefore be a double whammy for these communities: a higher rate of infection and a higher risk of severe illness or death following infection.

Implications for COVID-19 response

These findings show the potentially devastating impact COVID-19 could have on Maori and Pacific communities in New Zealand. The pandemic has potential to intensify existing social inequities that result from colonisation and systemic racism.

Our health-care system was under resource pressure prior to COVID-19 and was already being challenged for its inequitable care. The results of our study reinforce the importance of controlling the virus and preventing it from spreading into at-risk communities. It also highlights the need for measures that work well for affected communities to protect at-risk groups.

A "one size fits all" approach will result in higher rates of avoidable illness and death for Maori and Pacific communities. Te Ropu Whakakaupapa Uruta, the National Maori Pandemic Group, has clearly argued that if New Zealand wants to prevent these outcomes, the pandemic response must focus on equity.

Routine monitoring and reporting of the impact of the pandemic needs to explicitly address equity. That will require an approach that supports communities to design and deliver interventions that are effective for them.

• Michael Plank Professor in Mathematics, University of Canterbury
• Andrew Sporle Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Auckland
• Kate Hannah Researcher, University of Auckland
• Melissa McLeod Senior research fellow, University of Otago
• Nicholas Steyn Research assistant, University of Auckland
• First published in The Conversation. Republished with permission
• The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of CathNews.

These are the word of American physician and palliative care advocate Dr Ira Byock in response to the crisis we find ourselves in across the globe.

Without doubt, Covid-19 has made us contemplate our own deaths in a way we haven't had to for several generations.

While we have so far been spared the volume of deaths witnessed overseas, through the media we have learned a lot about what people are going through.

We have also heard the stories of 20 New Zealanders (at the time of writing) who have sadly died.

Among these are tragic accounts of people of all ages who have deteriorated very quickly and died, even when they have received the best and most appropriate medical care available.

Often, in this kind of situation, health care professionals talk about ‘planning for the worst and hoping for the best'.

This might involve challenging but honest conversations about what is important to you, what you value most and what treatments can and can't be offered. Dr Peter Saul, an intensive care specialist from Australia, calls this "speaking the truth with kindness".

However, for some families, these conversations will have been made more difficult by not knowing what their family member would have wanted in this situation.

Indeed, our research shows that many of us don't think - or talk - about our end of life preferences until it is too late.

There has never been a more critical time than now, in the midst of a pandemic, to think about who you would want to speak up for you should you become sick and are dying.

• Will those whanau closest to you know what you value most?
• Do they know what is most important to you?
• Will they know what kind of treatments and care you would or wouldn't want if you become critically unwell?
• What would a ‘good' death mean for you?

And we would argue that you shouldn't wait until you are really sick or at the end of life to have these conversations.

You can talk to friends, families and whanau about what you value, who is important to you and what is most important to you now. Continue reading

While the chapel is some "weird Catholic stuff," to say the least, it does present a pressing and unavoidable lesson: that our lives are short and that we are all going to die. Read more

The lifelong Baptist appeared in church less than two weeks after being hospitalized for fracturing his pelvis in a fall.

The 95-year-old was teaching Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, centered around the concept of life after death in the Christian faith.

As documented in the church's Facebook Live video, he explained that as a child and later while in the Navy, he didn't completely believe in the concept, but it was brought to his "full awareness" as an adult. Read more

Not only that: it teaches that "... all the good fruits of human nature, and all the good fruits of human enterprise, we shall find again, cleansed and transfigured..." (Second Vatican Council, GS 39).

In other words, nothing that is precious to us - in our own life or in the lives of our friends - is ever lost. It will all belong in the "new creation".

It is natural also to remember those who have died.

This helps us to experience our on-going relationship with them.

A sense of still belonging to each other is heightened when our remembering is ritualized, as it is in our nation's ANZAC memorial services.

A deep human instinct assures us of this belonging, and so does our faith.

This is evidenced by the participation of so many young people who are choosing to participate in these services.

Just as our life is a gift from God in the first place, so too is eternal life.

There are no words for describing the wonderful future God has in store for us. The scriptures use picture language, e.g. a great banquet.

And because it is a gift - not owed to us - we wait for God to invite us in, at a time of God's choosing; we don't decide the time - we don't gate-crash.

Nor do we let our life or our death just happen to us; we actively receive them.

We receive gifts by saying "thank you."

And remember: hope is not an assurance that things will always turn out the way we would like; rather, it is deep conviction that "all will be well" even when they don't!

In the end, all our becoming is safely in God's hands:

Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God still, and trust in me.
There are many rooms in my Father's house;
If there were not, I should have told you.
I am going now to prepare a place for you,
and after I have gone and prepared you a place,
I shall return to take you with me;
so that where I am, you may be too. (John 14:1-3)

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels. Here he shares his reflections on sciences and Christian faith. To conclude the introduction of this series he quotes Albert Einstein, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."
• This is the twelveth and final in a series of chapters from his letter to senior students
• Image: Manawatu Standard

He had been ill with cancer for some time.

Pope John Paul II appointed O'Connell to be the bishop of Rarotonga in November 1996.

He was ordained bishop on February 22 in St Joseph's Cathedral, Avarua.

His predecessor, Robin Leamy, was the consecrating bishop.

Archbishop of Wellington Cardinal Thomas Williams and Bishop of Tonga John Foliaki assisted him.

O'Connell was born in 1935. He was professed in the Society of Mary in 1956 and ordained a priest in July 1960.

Before becoming the bishop of Rarotonga, O'Connell pursued varied ministries that included secondary school teaching in New Zealand and the Pacific, in priestly formation and in leadership in the Society of Mary.

He taught at Chanel College in Samoa from 1966 to 1969.

He returned there as Rector from 1976 until 1982.

For two years he was involved in priestly formation at the Society of Mary Seminary in Greenmeadows.

From 1985 until his episcopal appointment he was part of the leadership team in the New Zealand Province of the Society of Mary.

He was at various times during this period councillor, vicar provincial and provincial bursar.

In 1991 O'Connell was elected provincial of the New Zealand province, a post he held until his episcopal appointment.

After he resigned as the bishop of Rarotonga in 2011, O'Connell lived in retirement in Auckland and assisted Bishop Patrick Dunn.

A vigil mass will be celebrated at Christ the King Church, Owairaka, 260 Richardson Rd, Auckland at 7.00pm on Thursday 8th August.

Bishop Paul Donoghue, the present bishop of Rarotonga, will be the principal celebrant.

Requiem Mass will be celebrated in the same church at 11.30am on Friday 9th August. Bishop Denis Browne will be the principal celebrant.

Burial will be at St Patrick's Church Cemetery, Panmure.

Source
Supplied

The book introduced readers to the "five stages of grief" model she had developed to explain how people cope with death.

The five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

Then in 1995, following a series of strokes, Kübler-Ross was confronted with the prospect of her own death.

Her son, Ken Ross, says though his mother dedicated her life to articulating grief to others, when faced with her own grief, she still had a big lesson to learn.

'Kenneth, I don't want to die'

Mr Ross cared for his mother for nearly a decade leading up to her death in 2004.

"A few weeks before she passed she said to me, 'Kenneth, I don't want to die'," he recalls.

It surprised him, as it seemed to contradict the stages of grieving she'd spent her life teaching others about.

He observed that, though his mother was an expert on dying, she wasn't immune to its challenges.

Only recently has Mr Ross come to fully understand what he observed in his mother in her final years.

"The fact is she was paralysed for nine years and she was in [the] anger stage," he says.

Mr Ross says his mother "got a lot of flak" in the media in the years before her death, because her lack of ease with death made her appear she wasn't practising what she taught.

"People felt that she shouldn't go through [the stages of grief] for some reason," he says.

Kübler-Ross's anger did dissipate before her death — after she processed it with those closest to her.

Mr Ross admits he "pushed" his mother out of her comfort zone in her final years, assisting her through marathons in her wheelchair and travelling with her to Europe to visit her sisters.

He says Kübler-Ross "gave up on the anger" after these demonstrations of love.

"[She] let herself be loved and taken care of, then that was her final lesson — and then she was allowed to graduate," he says.

"For years I thought about this and what I realised was, that's exactly what she teaches."

When "you learn your lessons you're allowed to graduate", Mr Ross says; that is, you're allowed to die.

Pioneer and rebel

Kübler-Ross spent her life speaking openly about death and dying, and fighting for the rights of the dying.

"She would always do whatever she felt was right to help dying people and anyone who was downtrodden," Mr Ross says.

She did this even when, in the earlier parts of her career in particular, speaking openly about death was frowned upon, he says.

"She was a pioneer and such a rebel."

Kübler-Ross's controversial work, especially in the 1960s and 70s, wasn't always met with a positive reception.

"You can't imagine how shocking it was at that time for someone to be talking to dying patients and telling them the truth," he says.

According to Mr Ross, throughout his mother's life she received death threats, was spat on by doctors and the family home was even burnt down — twice. Continue reading

• Image: iPerspective

So why now, at the beginning of the 21st century, after prohibiting euthanasia for thousands of years and when we can do so much more to relieve suffering than in the past, do we suddenly think that legalising it is a good idea?

I propose a major cause is a catastrophic failure of collective human memory and collective human imagination.

Let‘s look at the approaches taken on each side of the debate.

If euthanasia were a stone thrown into a pond, pro-euthanasia advocates see only the stone and the immediate splash, not the stone's antecedents or the widespread ripples it sets off.

These blind spots constitute, respectively, a failure of human memory and of human imagination.

The pro-euthanasia case is straightforward and easy to make. (I will use the word euthanasia to include physician-assisted suicide (PAS).

It focuses on a suffering, competent, adult individual who wants to die and gives informed consent to euthanasia.

Proponents argue that the person's right to autonomy overrides other considerations, concerns and values, and that denying them euthanasia is cruelty and providing it kindness.

Pro-euthanasia advocates reject history - especially any reference to the Nazi atrocities - as having anything, or at least anything valuable, to teach us regarding euthanasia.

Nobody believes legalising euthanasia will result in a Holocaust, but the justifications for the Third Reich's early 1930's euthanasia program for people with disabilities - "lives not worth living" - are eerily similar to present justifications for euthanasia.

As Catherine Frazee, a Canadian professor of disability studies has said, "The Nazi ... euthanasia program is part of my history as a disabled person."

Pro-euthanasia advocates also deny the reality of the slippery slopes it's opened up in the Netherlands and Belgium. Continue reading

• Margaret Somerville is professor of bioethics in the school of medicine at the University of Notre Dame, Australia.

His sudden death was as a result of a heart attack. He was 67.

Lonsdale, who served as president from 22 September 2014 until he died, was also an Anglican priest.

James Melvin Ligo, the Anglican bishop of Vanuatu and Patterson Woreck, the Anglican bishop of Banks and Torres conducted the funeral service.

Lonsdale was one of the most widely respected figures in Vanuatu since Father Walter Lini, the country's first Prime Minister.

Radio New Zealand quoted former long-time Vanuatu parliamentarian Sela Molisa as saying that the country had "lost one of its greatest leaders."

Molisa says Lonsdale turned a largely ceremonial role into a pillar of stability during a political crisis in 2015.

When the president was overseas, the then-speaker of parliament, Marcellino Pipite, as acting president, pardoned himself and 12 other MPs of corruption convictions.

Lonsdale rescinded the pardons when he returned to the country, vowing to 'clean the dirt' from his backyard, before dissolving parliament and calling snap elections.

Dan McGarry, media director for the Vanuatu Daily Post group reporting on the Funeral said, "Vanuatu has never seen an outpouring of sorrow and admiration such as it witnessed yesterday..."

Following the service,Lonsdale's casket was loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck festooned with flowers and the Vanuatu flag.

It led a kilometre-long procession of hundreds of vehicles through the main streets of Port Vila.

McGarry said it was difficult to accurately estimate the number of people who lined the roughly six-kilometre long route, "but there has been no similar public gathering in living memory".

Source

• Asiapacificreport
• Deutsche Welle
• RNZ
• Pasifik.news
• Image: Asiapacificreport

And then…? Well, a few weeks of lilies and extra "Alleluias!" and then back to business as usual. (E.g., First Confessions and Communions in May, a spate of weddings in June, etc.)

It seems that Holy Week is a lot of work for a few, an inconvenience for a few more ("How many times do I have to drag the kids to church this week?!?"), and an annual irrelevance for many, if not most Catholics. But does it have to be that way?

Here's the key problem with Holy Week as described above: People who halfheartedly believe that they're sinners try to stir up sorrow for an atoning death they're not quite convinced they need, so that a few days later they can try to stir up joy for the benefits of a resurrection they don't quite understand or believe in.

So understood, it's not very convincing theater, and even less is it worthy worship.

Why do we put up with it? Why does the Church ask us to put on this act year after year? That's asking the wrong question. Better: What is divine mercy and providence offering us in Holy Week?

And how can we be good stewards of what could be the last Holy Week we will ever see? (Remember that not one future moment is guaranteed to anyone.)

We're created in the image and likeness of God. Our souls, which we surrendered to the dominion of Satan by our sin, are worth fighting for.

Jesus, Son of God and son of Mary, ransomed our souls with his own blood. If you were given one week before your death to contemplate that truly shocking fact—how would you spend it? Continue reading

• Father Robert McTeigue, SJ, is a member of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus.