Thinking about Death

It was early on February 15 that I started writing this article, for it turned out that my wife June and I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about death on Valentine’s Day.

Our Sunday School class discussion that morning as well as the movie we watched that evening were both about death. We also were sad to hear that two people in our circle of acquaintances had died that day.  

Death in “Fidelity”

On the morning of Valentine’s Day, the Sunday School class had a long and fruitful discussion of “Fidelity,” Wendell Berry’s short story first published in 1992. It centers around the death of an 82-year-old man—the very age I am now.

In that intriguing story, Burley is seriously ill, so his family and neighbors, wanting to do something for him, take him, without him being able to give his assent, to a hospital in Louisville where he is hooked up to all sorts of life-lengthening devices. But he was deprived of his right to die with dignity.

Death in Blackbird

That evening we happened upon Blackbird, a 2019 Prime Video movie that we had never heard of—and which was panned by the movie reviewers we read after we watched it. But we thought it dealt with the planned death of Lily, the central character, in a thought-provoking way.

Lily has a serious degenerative disease. It seems that soon she will lose all ability to function as a normal human being, likely even to lose the ability to swallow. Before that happens, she wants to have an enjoyable weekend with her family and then drink the lethal potion procured by her doctor husband.

Choosing death with dignity rather than having to suffer and/or to exist in a prolonged vegetative state is the issue in this movie, similar to that of “Fidelity.”

Death Control as Well as Birth Control?

Contraception, commonly called birth control, has long and consistently been opposed by the Roman Catholic Church—and in recent decades by an increasing number of conservative evangelicals. But birth control is legal and widely practiced in the U.S. and Europe.

Has the time now come for wider acceptance of, and more legal provision for, what might be called death control? Note that whereas birth control is taking means to prevent pregnancy/birth, death control as I am using the term here is taking means to hasten death.

Death control is not a widely used term—and sometimes it is employed to refer to efforts to prevent death just as birth control is a term used to prevent pregnancy/birth. But I am using the term to refer to suffering, terminally ill people taking the initiative to end their lives.

Of course, there are strong religious and ethical arguments against all forms of death control. Again, the Roman Catholic Church and conservative evangelicals are at the forefront of that opposition. Birth and death should be completely left to God, they say, and humans should yield to God’s will.

Similarly, there was a time when it was widely thought that vaccines interfered with the natural order, or the divine order, of things and should be spurned. For that reason, in the 18^th century U.S., some religious people saw vaccines as “the devil’s work.”

In much the same way, birth control opponents through the years have also seen using “artificial means” to prevent pregnancy to be attempts to usurp God’s work in creating new human life.

The Roman Catholic Church, for example, teaches that using contraception is "intrinsically evil," for it gives human beings the power to decide when a new life should begin whereas that power really belongs to God.

Death control is staunchly opposed for the same reason: the power to decide when life should end, they declare, also belongs only to God.

But for those who see no ethical problem with birth control, or vaccines, shouldn’t the prudent use of death control also be considered ethically permissible?

(I am planning to post more about this controversial topic on March 5.)

A Praiseworthy Pioneer for Women’s Freedom

In stark contrast to my previous article about Mother Teresa, who was canonized just yesterday, this article is about a woman who throughout her lifetime opposed the Roman Catholic Church and was constantly opposed by the RCC as well as by many traditional Protestants.

Even though she died 50 years ago, this woman is still being severely criticized by some people, and Hillary Clinton’s approval of her is one of the reasons Hillary is currently being vilified, as I also wrote about recently.

Introducing Margaret Sanger

The person in question is Margaret Sanger, who was born in 1879 and died on September 6, 1966. Her lifelong passion was providing women with the knowledge about how to prevent pregnancies. In 1914 she coined the term “birth control,” and she was a fearless crusader for that cause, which culminated with the FDA’s approval of the use of “the pill” in 1960.

As a young nurse working in New York City, Margaret saw firsthand the misery of people living in poverty with more children than they could possibly care for adequately. And she saw the extreme suffering and even the death of some women who sought to have illegal and often unsafe abortions—or who tried to perform abortions on themselves.

Consistently an opponent of abortions, Sanger sought to help women gain the knowledge and the means to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

After several years of publishing and distributing literature that was deemed illegal according to the Comstock Act of 1873 and after spending in time in jail following her opening of a birth control clinic in Brooklyn in October 1916, Margaret started the American Birth Control League in 1921.

That group developed into the organization that since 1942 has been known as Planned Parenthood Federation of America, even though Margaret did not like the new name. 

Vindicating Margaret Sanger

In addition to charges that Sanger favored abortion, which she didn’t, she has also been charged with being a supporter of eugenics, which she was, as well as being a racist, which is patently false.

There was much interest in and support of eugenics in the first part of the twentieth century—and one of the main political supporters was the Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Sanger probably said things that we now would find problematical, but her view on eugenics in the first third of last century was very similar to that of many respected academics and politicians.

The biggest lie being told about Sanger is that she targeted African-American families. Two of her early supporters, though, were Adam Clayton Powell, pastor of the largest African-American church in the U.S. and W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the NAACP—hardly people who would be on the side of a racist.

Sanger’s vocal critics also fail to note that in 1966 Martin Luther King, Jr., was one of the first recipients of the newly-established Margaret Sanger Award and that Mrs. King publically spoke in praise of Sanger and her activities. (Hillary Clinton received that award in 1999.)

There were questionable aspects to Sanger’s personal lifestyle, things that I would not condone, but her single-minded dedication to women’s freedom and the right to control their own bodies and the size of their families was a praiseworthy contribution to the well-being of our nation.

Resources consulted

Jean H. Baker, Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion (2011) – A sympathetic biography 

Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography (1938, 1999) – In her own words 

“Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story” (1995) – TV movie 

“Margaret Sanger,” Cobblestone Films (1998) – Available online at Mid-Continent Public Library

Saint Teresa: The Good and the Questionable

Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was given that name at the time of her birth on August 26, 1910. Most people around the world, however, have for decades known her as Mother Teresa.

On September 4, this coming Sunday, during a canonization Mass in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Pope Francis will declare Blessed Teresa of Calcutta to be a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

By many people, though, Mother Teresa has been thought of as a saint for a long time. Back in 1975 the cover story of the December 29 issue of Time magazine was titled “Living Saints.” Mother Teresa’s picture was on the cover of that issue.

As a Protestant, it is not hard to understand the meaning of “saint” in the popular sense, such as that term was used in the Time article. But people being saints in the Catholic sense is a little more difficult—especially when it involves their veneration, which we Protestants sometimes incorrectly think is the worship of saints.

Recently, though, in commenting on the legacy of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson wrote, “The canonization of Kolbe makes me think that the Church’s singling out of certain saints has real value in challenging the rest of us to live our faith.”

Or, as it is sometimes said, saints are special people who by their lives help us to understand God better. Accordingly, by looking at Saint Teresa’s loving service to the “poorest of the poor” in Calcutta we should be able to understand God’s love better.  

When she was 40 years old, Mother Teresa was given permission by the Pope to begin a congregation called Missionaries of Charity. From their small beginning in 1950, that group grew into a large worldwide organization.

Because of their meritorious work, starting in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and then expanding to many countries, Mother Teresa became known around the world. As one indication of how esteemed she became for what had done through the years, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

There are some questionable aspects of Mother Teresa’s life and work, however. For example, I have serious misgivings about some things she has said—such as her extreme words opposing abortion. In her Nobel Lecture she declared that “the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion.”

In that speech Mother Teresa went on to assert that abortion “is a direct war, a direct killing—direct murder by the mother herself.”

Highly questionable statements!

Mother Teresa’s greatest strength was the loving service she provided for the sick and the dying who were living in poverty. Perhaps her greatest weakness was lack of action—or even talk—regarding the causes of poverty. She did a marvelous job of taking care of victims; she did little in seeking to reduce the number of victims.

To her credit, in her Nobel Lecture Mother Teresa reported that she and her co-workers were teaching “natural family planning” to “our beggars, our leprosy patients, our slum dwellers.” Elsewhere she claimed that such teaching given to three thousand families was “95 percent effective” (No Greater Love, pp. 127-8).

Still, how many more unwanted pregnancies might she have prevented if she had been willing to teach and provide the means for “artificial birth control”? She could not do that, of course, as a Catholic.

But no one, not even a saint, is perfect, and Mother Teresa did demonstrate great Christian love throughout her lifetime. So please rejoice with me this weekend as Mother Teresa is canonized, publically acknowledged as a saint.

“War on Religion” Nonsense

“Be Not Afraid,” a TV ad paid for by the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee, was released yesterday (August 9). 

"President Obama used his health care plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith," the narrator says at the beginning of the 30-second ad. Superimposed on the picture is a reference to San Antonio Express-News, 02-01-2012.

The February 1 Express-News article, “Obama insurance decision declares war on religion,” ended with Michael Gerson’s e-mail address. But, inexplicably, the Romney ad does not mention that that piece was written by Gerson and published in the Washington Post on January 30. (Gerson's op-ed article was titled “Obama plays his Catholic allies for fools” and ends by asserting that “the war on religion is now formally declared.”)

In reply to the Romney ad, Lis Smith, a spokeswoman for the Obama campaign, said the president “believes that, in 2012, women should have access to free contraception as part of their health insurance, and he has done so in a way that respects religious liberty. Churches are completely exempt and religiously affiliated organizations that object to providing the service will never have to pay for contraception” (from USA Today).

Opposition to the provisions of “Obamacare” that require employers to provide insurance including coverage of legal abortion, sterilization, and contraception has been loud and persistent.

However, providing insurance coverage for something doesn’t mean that people have to use that coverage. For example, just because my insurance policy covers appendectomies, that doesn’t mean I have to go out and have an appendectomy. It is the same with abortion, sterilization, and/or contraception.

Providing coverage doesn’t mean that people who don’t want to be sterilized have to have such a procedure. Of course not!

I am a strong supporter of religious liberty and a staunch supporter of the separation of church and state. But for the life of me, I can’t understand why being required to provide full insurance coverage to employees can be considered a violation of religious freedom or a war on religon.

If it is, does that mean that employers can withhold wages from their employees if they know that those employees are using their wages for immoral purposes? If people choose to use insurance in ways that violate the religious conscience of their employer who provides that insurance, isn’t it equally objectionable for people use their wages in ways that violate the consciences of those who paid them?

Suppose Mr. A is the owner of a company and he finds out that one of his fulltime employees, a married man, is regularly spending around 8% of his earnings on keeping a mistress. By doing that with his paycheck the employee is violating Mr. A’s religious conscience. After all, the Bible is pretty clear: “Thou shall not commit adultery.” So, shouldn’t Mr. A have the religious freedom to deduct 8% from the man’s pay each month?

I doubt that many people would agree that Mr. A should have the freedom to deduct his employee’s pay for that reason. So why should employers have the right to withhold insurance coverage because of “religious freedom”? And why should requiring them to provide insurance be called a war on religion?

Such employers say that people can, and should, pay for their own contraceptives, etc. But if employers require people to buy what they, the employers, should provide through insurance coverage, in effect isn’t that the same as withholding wages from them?

Talk about the President’s “war on religion” is, frankly, political nonsense.

The Contraception Wars

You can call me old-fashioned if you want to, but I do not approve of or condone premarital or extra-marital sexual intercourse.

The call on extra-marital sex is pretty easy. Not only is “Thou shalt not commit adultery” one of the Ten Commandments, it is quite clear that adulterous activity could only damage a marriage relationship and despoil the marriage covenant. Like all the other commandments, this one too was given for the sake of individual happiness and the well-being of the community.

The matter of premarital sex is not quite so clear, although the Bible is fairly explicit in prohibition against “fornication,” which surely includes at least most premarital sexual activity. But in many ways things are different now than in Bible times—and plenty of people in modern society don’t claim to go by the Bible anyway.

Fifty or sixty years ago it was sometimes said that the three main reasons for not engaging in premarital sex was the fear of detection, infection, and conception. With the sexual revolution of the 1960s, people began to attach less and less stigma to premarital sex, so the detection deterrent was greatly weakened. Then with the effectiveness and availability of penicillin, the fear of infection also greatly decreased. (Of course, the growing frequency of HIV/AIDS has once again increased that fear for many people.)

So then we come to the matter of conception. In years past, there was generally societal disapproval of single women who got pregnant. But even now when there is far less stigma, the burden of becoming a mother without the support of a nurturing mate/father is great indeed. (Of course there are some cohabitating men who function like a good husband, but I wonder if such cases tend to be the exception more than the rule.)

If people are going to have premarital sex, which probably going to be the case for a large majority of unmarried people in the U.S. today, it seems as though making contraception available for those who need it is the prudent thing to do. Would that increase premarital sexual activity? Possibly. Would that decrease the number of children born out of wedlock as well as the number of abortions? Most probably.

So while I do not approve or condone premarital sex, I not only support making contraception available to women who feel the need for it, I agree that insurance policies, including those provided by any employer, ought to include coverage for contraception.

There are those who argue that conception is not a disease, and, of course, it isn’t. But it can certainly be argued that having unwanted children (or an abortion) is not good for the health of any woman. Health insurance should be for the purpose of promoting health of mind and body, not just paying for the treatment of illness or injury.

So, it seems quite clear that the concerted opposition to contraceptives being provided by health insurance paid for by employers, to say nothing of the asinine remarks by Rush Limbaugh about the Georgetown University law student, is missing the mark and deserves the considerable criticism it has received.

Note: For those interested in reading more along this line, I recommend this excellent article by Richard Cizik on the blog of The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good.