Editor’s Note: Regarding our recent column on advanced medical directives and particularly the Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST), A.M.V. of Florida writes to say that the American Life League provides individuals with a document called the “Loving Will,” which corresponds to Catholic teaching. She said that this document was “crucial with my mom’s situation” when she was admitted into “a quality nursing home that had a special unit for female patients with advanced dementia. While there was not much that could be done to improve her condition at this point, I wanted everything possible done to make her comfortable and maintain her status. I often referred to the Loving Will she had and had several copies made so that the medical director and staff knew exactly what my mom, as well as I, as her health surrogate and guardian, wanted.
“As you know, in today’s world, the slippery slope of semantics is used, especially that term ‘quality of life.’ Anyhow, she lived a few more weeks in the nursing home, and when I looked into an old prayer book she had a couple of months after she passed away, I found a prayer card in memory of her dad, who had passed away years before on the same exact date — February 18. Somehow, that confirmed for me that I did all that I could to have her live in accordance with just how long the Lord ordained her to live.
“Here’s a link to ALL’s Loving Will: www.all.org/article/index/id/MjQ5NA. Perhaps some of your readers would be interested in ordering it. I highly recommend it.”
Q. When the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25) falls on a Friday of Lent, are Catholics still obliged to abstain from meat? Our deacon claims that the solemnity and importance of the day override the abstinence rule, but our priest says it does not. Who is right? — J.K., Texas.
A. The deacon is right. According to canon 1251 of the Code of Canon Law, “Abstinence from eating meat or another food according to the prescriptions of the conference of bishops is to be observed on Fridays throughout the year unless they are solemnities; abstinence and fast are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and on the Friday of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Q. Was it Pope Pius III or IV or V who condemned the slave trade and placed those involved in excommunicated status? — S.C., California.
A. Slavery was a legal and accepted part of Roman society when the Catholic Church came into existence in the first century, but the Church’s efforts to better the lot of slaves by emphasizing their human dignity and working for their emancipation led to its virtual eradication by the fifth century. Slavery surfaced again when the barbarians swept through Europe, but the Church’s evangelizing and civilizing efforts were successful in almost eliminating the institution before it erupted again with the expeditions to the New World by Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th centuries.
The Popes in those and succeeding centuries, including Eugene IV in 1435, Pius II in 1482, Paul III in 1537 (he imposed excommunication on those who took part in the slave trade), Urban VIII in 1689, Benedict XIV in 1741, and Gregory XVI in 1838, all condemned slavery. The Catechism of the Catholic Church continued this long tradition in 1992 by saying that the Seventh Commandment forbids acts or enterprises that “lead to the enslavement of human beings, to their being bought, sold, and exchanged like merchandise, in disregard for their personal dignity” (n. 2414).
Slavery, unfortunately, is rampant today, especially in the trafficking of young girls for sexual exploitation. Citing a United Nations report in a recent article she wrote for The Daily Caller, Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, said that the Islamic terrorist movement ISIS “has imprisoned, abused, and sold at least 2,500 women and children for around $10 per person to recruit new militants to the Islamic state.”
She said that “these women have been forced to watch as their homes are destroyed, their husbands, fathers, and brothers are beheaded, and their children are taken from them. With no time to grieve, the women are forced into a phony marriage (where they are repeatedly raped) or simply raped and cast aside. The ISIS militants know what they are doing — they want to build an Islamic state, and they need women and more recruits to help.”
One infuriating thing about this barbaric campaign, said Nance, is that “the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, and other so-called ‘advocates for women’ have been silent on the issue. They have invested their political capital into continuing to promulgate a narrative that contains the word ‘war’ but ignores the real war. These groups and liberal feminists have used the term ‘war on women’ to describe companies not providing abortion-inducing drugs in their health-care coverage, belittling the plight of Iraqi women who face actual war.”
She said that in America you can purchase birth control for $10, but in the region controlled by ISIS you can purchase a woman or girl for the same price.
Q. Is it true that some people experience their entire life in flashes before them when they are near death by an accident or some life-threatening situation? How could that happen in a short time? — A.N., Oregon.
A. The term “near-death experience” was coined by Raymond Moody in his 1975 book Life After Life. Thousands of people have gone through NDEs after being involved in accidents or while undergoing medical operations, and they have reported a variety of sensations. These include intense light, sometimes at the end of a tunnel; out-of-body experiences, such as looking down on a car accident or at themselves on an operating table; communication with spirits, whom Christians perceived as God and who gave them a choice of going toward the light or returning to their earthly life; and what is called “the panoramic life review,” where the person sees his or her entire life in detail or very briefly.
Some of the subjects found themselves fearful or depressed after an NDE, while research showed that others were more appreciative of life, less fearful of death, and had a new sense of purpose.
We don’t know what it means to have one’s entire life flash before them, but we assume it does not mean day-by-day activity, but rather highlights and lowlights. How long would it take for you to review the highs and lows of your life? Probably not very long, and the process is apparently speeded up during NDEs.
Is this the same kind of review we can expect at the Particular Judgment, when we will learn of our eternal destiny — Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory? Rather than worry about this, though, we would be better off making sure that our good deeds far outweigh our bad ones, and that we have repented of our sins.
We read a story recently about St. John Vianney (1786-1859), who was famous for hearing Confessions up to 18 hours a day. A woman whose brother had committed suicide by jumping off a bridge came to his parish one day seeking consolation. But the lines of people waiting to see the Curé of Ars were so long that, after several hours, the woman could not stay any longer and began to walk away. The saint called out to her and said that her brother was in Purgatory and would eventually get to Heaven.
How can that be, the woman asked. St. John told her that in the moments between the time he jumped from the bridge and the time he landed in the water, he had said that he was sorry for his sins.
Q. When I tried to persuade a friend to go to Mass, he said that God knew that he was a good person and that he didn’t have to go to church. What could I have said? — M.K.D., New York.
A. You could have said that while he might be a good person, he was not a “God person.” You could have said that when he stands before God on Judgment Day, it won’t be enough to say that he coached Little League or raised money for breast cancer because that fulfills only the second commandment — to love one’s neighbor as oneself. You could remind him that Jesus said the first and greatest commandment was, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37).
How sympathetic will Jesus be to someone who couldn’t find the time to give the adoration, thanksgiving, and praise due to Him by taking part in the highest form of worship we have — Holy Mass?
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