I have worked my way through Dignitas Infinita and I do not find a lot to get worked up over, and have found quite a bit to praise.

Apart from the unusually precise language about the ills of gender ideology and surrogacy and human trafficking I very much appreciated the section on euthanasia particularly "suffering does not cause the sick to lose their dignity, which is intrinsically and inalienably their own"

This is such a short but important sentence. We have such a skewed view of what a "good death is". I can't tell you how many people I've heard say " I want to go out on my own terms, with dignity, not decaying in a hospital bed".

You have never seen more dignity than watching someone with terminal cancer strive to the finish line, bearing their torment and offering it up. It's not "pretty" but dignity isn't about dying with a full head of hair and perfect teeth with a smile on your face before your time is up. It's about accepting the cup and saying "your will be done".

Jabin said:

---

This is something I've pondered about quite a bit recently. You make good points, but on the other side of the equation I ask myself:

• It may be urban myth only, but didn't some folks in highly secure positions (e.g., U2 pilots) have poison pills to take if they were captured? Is that wrong?
• Again, this may be myth, but supposedly folks in the settlement of the western US, in the event of a fight with Indians, would save one bullet for themself or their buddy to prevent capture and torture. Is that wrong?
• Not all long term death is a conscious cancer survivor hanging on to the end. Just as often it's someone who is a drooling idiot for months or years. Wouldn't it be humane to end their misery?
• A friend of mine's dad died of eso****eal cancer. My friend told me that the pain meds eventually quit working and the last few months or weeks of his dad's life he was literally screaming in agony. How is that humane or God's will to keep him alive?
• When we put our dogs down, we call it "humane". Why is it considered wrong or sin to "humanely" end a person's life?
• If the argument is that it is up to God when to take someone's life, then doesn't the flip side of that argument mean that we shouldn't do anything to extend someone's life? That is, no surgery, no medications, nothing.

I'm not arguing these points, keep in mind, because I don't have a position. These are just counter-arguments that I'm pondering.

---

Yes, it's a sin to kill yourself regardless of your reasoning, but here is where it gets tricky, it's the intent. Say a Soldier in Vietnam is leading his troops, and a grenade comes flying in to the middle of the group, he can jump to safety but decides to jump on the grenade to save the rest of his squad. That is noble, because he didn't want to die but did so in order to save his soldiers. The pioneers would have been wrong to shoot themselves in the head to avoid torture, even though I can understand the fear.

The person I was speaking about above was my father who died of stage 4 pancreatic cancer at age 58. About every "indignity" one can suffer he did, as he lost control of his body towards the end. This was a guy who was a millionaire, 6'8" tall, 280 pounds of late middle age manliness, shrunk to 200 lbs and yellow from liver failure. It was very tough, but just as Christ asked for the cup to be taken from him, yet did God's will, my father drank the full cup and I believe is in paradise. There is no better example of humanity than Christ.

Dying is very natural, it is not bad to die, it is bad to kill yourself. As a Catholic if you are dying/terminal, you can refuse treatment and die a natural death. Many Catholics who are old or sick have DNR's to avoid "heroic measures" which could possibly save their life if dying.

On the same token it's not wrong to try to live either, so surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, antibiotics, etc are all fine.

Eura Et Bona, section 4 discusses if you're interested. It's a 1980 declaration from the CDF on the morality of euthanasia.

AggieRain said:

---

I watched my mom pass away from glioblastoma. Diagnosed in Jan 2019 and made it to Jan 2021. Never gave up and never surrendered. She was scheduled for further treatment in late 2020 (tumors came back with a vengeance in Nov. 2020), but she fell and shattered her leg. They couldn't start treatment until after the leg surgery, but by then there was no more need. If you know anything about GBM, you know that it is always hungry and a ravenous eater...

The very end was terribly unpleasant to experience. It has given me to wonder if I would ever consider punching my own ticket to spare my family that pain. In that case, am I the soldier jumping on the grenade or am I a coward punching out? I'm not sure I can answer this yet three years later in 2024...

---

The only thing I can tell you from the perspective of a child is how proud that I was of my dad and how humbled I was that a person who was so powerful and so capable during life embraced his infirmity until the end. He lasted 3 years with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, 6 times as long as they told him he would live. He fought as long as he could, and when the chemo stopped working, he went to hospice. The last months were terrible. They were very hard as his child, but I was still so honored to be with him during those times.

I haven't read the new document, and likely won't in the near term. However, the stories shared above resonate. My grandfather, probably one of my top heroes, fought Parkinson's and accompanying ailments to the end. He quietly taught me much about my Catholic faith and heritage throughout his life. His final years were an exclamation point on it all. Profound impact. I still vividly remember 8/14/1997, the day he met his Maker.

PabloSerna said:

---

Thanks for the link.

+++

My first pass through this document aligns exactly how I have come to understand the various topics, especially as it breaks down gender theory and sex change.

Curiously it does not mention transsexual persons, many of whom do not go as far as having surgery to change the form of their bodies. While it may not resonate with many, just the idea of this is so important to begin an understanding of where the church magisterium stands and where the challenges are for the church faithful.

---

60 seems to address this.

At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created."[109] It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.

Intervention there, does not necessarily mean surgical.

Again, a lot of good to be found, but there's a couple things I find difficult to square. The assertion that the death penalty always violates human dignity doesn't line up with the first two millennia of Catholic thought. I'm all for limiting it to the most heinous of crimes, where guilt is certain, but to say it's a morally evil act when a decade ago it was a prudential judgement seems less like "development" and more like revising doctrine.

I also find this line in #12 problematic:
The glorious Christ will judge by the love of neighbor that consists in ministering to the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned, with whom he identifies (cf. Mt. 25:34-36). For Jesus, the good done to every human being, regardless of the ties of blood or religion, is the single criterion of judgment

Love of neighbor is the single criterion of judgment? That's a heck of a claim. Our kid's parish preschool sent out a message with a similar theme (that the kids were learning about the "greatest commandment, loving your neighbor". I expect that kind of error/imprecision from a preschool...but from the DDF?!? Come on...

I'm glad this document was willing to clarify and take stands on a lot of moral ills facing us today. I just wish it maintained that clarity throughout.