APRIL 2005

OUR LORD LEADS, OUR CHURCH TEACHES

After returning home from the Service of Holy Communion on Holy Wednesday (March 23) and while helping with the evening dishes, I was half listening to the radio. "On Point" on NPR was on the air. The program’s host, Mr. Tom Ashbrook, casually mentioned that, for the rest of the hour, two guests, a Roman Catholic and a United Methodist, would be discussing the culture of life. Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, the editor in chief of First Things, would be the Catholic spokesman; and Dr. William Lawrence, the Dean of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, would be the Methodist representative. By this time, I was helplessly hooked. (After all, this pastor had worked with Rev. Neuhaus in New York City for nearly seven years, and Dr. Lawrence was formerly at Duke Divinity School.) The dishes had to wait. (Actually, truth be told, they were completed by Marsha.)

As the program unfolded, Rev. Neuhaus and Dr. Lawrence discussed the meaning of the culture of life and how it applied to Terri Schiavo. Rev. Neuhaus was determined to lay out moral principles, and then apply them to Mrs. Schiavo’s life and death. Taking a different approach, Dr. Lawrence was content to focus on difficult family, pastoral, and medical decisions that have to be made when someone becomes as debilitated as Mrs. Schiavo had become. Rev. Neuhaus’ moral principles served a culture of life, while Dr. Lawrence’s interest in decision-making tended towards a culture of choice.

Curious about official United Methodist teaching in this challenging area, I turned to our "Social Principles" in The Book of Discipline (2004) and our Book of Resolutions (2004). The following three quotations, which are taken from longer statements, seemed especially important:

(1) "The Church opposes assisted suicide and euthanasia." (Discipline, 161N, p.104)

(2) "We recognize and affirm the full humanity and personhood of all individuals with mental, physical, developmental, neurological, and psychological conditions or disabilities as full members of the family of God. We also affirm their rightful place in both the [C]hurch and society... We call on the Church and society to protect the civil rights of persons with all types and kinds of disabilities." (Discipline, 162G, "Rights of Persons with Disabilities," p. 107)

(3) "Historically, the Christian tradition has drawn a distinction between the cessation of treatment and the use of active measures by the patient or care-giver which aim to bring about death. If death is deliberately sought as the means to relieve suffering, that must be understood as direct and intentional taking of life, whether as suicide or homicide. This United Methodist tradition opposes the taking of life as an offense against God’s sole dominion over life, and an abandonment of hope and humility before God..." (Resolutions, 115, "Faithful Care for Persons Suffering and Dying, pp. 323-324)

United Methodist teaching, on issues surrounding Terri Schiavo’s life and death, advances two general moral principles: (a) Christians are always to care for, and never to kill, the severely disabled; and (b) Christians can and should allow a dying person to die (without treatments that would burden or harm the dying patient, and do nothing but prolong the process of dying), even while showing that person compassion. (By the way, these quotations and principles would make for especially good and helpful conversation in some of St. Peter’s Church’s Sunday School classes and small-group meetings.)

During this Season of Easter, while we continue to celebrate the grace and glory of the Resurrection of our Lord, we can be thankful that the Church gives us wisdom for helping us face the greatest challenges in this life. That is, our risen Lord has not left us to our own thinking, our own plans, our own choices. Our risen Lord, through his Church, has blessed us with his presence, with moral principles, and with moral boundaries that help lead us through all of life -- including the valleys of severe disability and "of the shadow of death" (Psalm 23).

Christ is risen. Christ is with us. Christ, through his Church, leads us. Thanks be to the risen Christ!