As I Suffer So Must Ye All
AP/NY Times reports that Vatican officials on Thursday held out Pope John Paul II's stoic suffering with Parkinson's disease as an antidote to the mentality that modern medicine must cure all, calling this a ``religion of health'' that is taking hold in affluent countries.I doubt the idea that stoic suffering is the morally desirable way to cope with illness will catch on outside the inner circle of the current Pope! - Art Caplan
``While millions of people in the world struggle to survive hunger and disease, lacking even minimal health care, in rich countries the concept of health as well-being figures in creating unrealistic expectations about the possibility of medicine to respond to all needs and desires,'' said the Rev. Maurizio Faggioni, a theologian and morality expert on the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life.
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I doubt the Pope is being allowed to suffer wihout concern and treatment by others. I suspect that he is receiving medication for his Parkinson's Disease. And look.. he received a tracheotomy today to relieve his respiratory suffering. As a physician, I don't look to suffering as a good. And anyway, medicine can't relieve all suffering, so those who want to be stoic and refuse to "kvetch" about their residual suffering, after medicine has done what it can, will easily have that opportunity. ..Maurice.
- by Maurice Bernstein, M.D. on Feb 24, 2005 at 9:31 PM | link
Art, you'd propose ending suffering by ending life, wouldn't you? I mean, you agree with the underlying point that there are limits to the public's ability to fund health care, but you'd propose--because of a different understanding of what makes life meaningful--that when health can't be achieved, life should be ended.
- by Thomas on Feb 26, 2005 at 12:02 AM | link
The issue of should we suffer as a part of dying has nothing whatsoever to do with money. It has to do with a theology that sees suffering as redemptive--necessary in order to be redeemed-- a view that I find flawed and even cruel.
- by Art Caplan on Feb 26, 2005 at 12:35 PM | link
Catholic theology does hold that suffering is necessary for redemption, but it also holds that that suffering has already been done.
This isn't a dispute about theology, but about humanity. The view that "suffering is part of life" is not linked to a view of redemption, but is part of a rejection of radical individualism, with its myth of independence. Dependency and broken-ness are part of the human condition, not simply reasons to kill.
- by Thomas on Feb 26, 2005 at 1:24 PM | link
So you throw up some nutty charge about money driving my views and I call your bluff. You cannot deliver.
Incredibly, since I pinpointed the nature of the real issue, you are going to defend the value of accepting suffering and the 'broken-ness' of the human condition!
Good luck selling your case. Especially trying to go after the 'myth' of independence in these United States.
But whether you can actually convince anyone that they should accept broken-ness and dependency as part of sickness and dying or as I would argue try to palliate such problems as much as is possible you are again out of bounds when you charge me with holding that they are 'simple reasons to kill'. Killing is not the issue.
The issue is whether avoiding suffering is grounds for allowing to die by stopping artificial medical technologies. I would argue that in many cases it is absolutely ethical to choose to stop or forgo such technology.
- by Art Caplan on Feb 26, 2005 at 8:18 PM | link
Art, first you misunderstood what was interesting about the article, and then you further misstated Catholic theology, and you've misunderstood my post.
I don't think it's "nutty" for money to be a factor, or to recognize that money is a factor, in our health care system. I don't think you really think that's nutty either. We don't have infinite resources, so decisions must be made, and health care for the sick isn't the only good in society, so funds available for health care are further limited. Decisions on care are made in that framework, which the Vatican sources, interestingly, finally mentioned. There's an important conversation to be had there, and you might have used that point of agreement (assuming it's not nutty to assert that it is a point of agreement) to talk about that subject.
I didn't assert or defend the "value of accepting suffering and and the 'broken-ness' of the human condition." I asserted that suffering and broken-ness are a part of the human condition.
The inevitability of dependence is a fact, regardless of what you or the good people of the United States believe. Those who take care of others are intimately aware of our limitations--every parent, for example, is aware of the limitations and dependence of every child. Children and others who are dependent (including those who are ill) have dignity. The argument for why that is will have to wait for another day.
My previous post would have been more accurate if it ended with the phrase "reasons to die." I apologize for the error.
- by Thomas on Feb 26, 2005 at 9:57 PM | link