USCCB marks November as National Hospice and Palliative Care Month
November 5, 2024 at 2:22 p.m.
An old Irish proverb says, “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live,” but when family members or friends approach life’s end, people may not know how best to “shelter” them.
So, as the Catholic Church recognizes All Souls during the month of November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also designated it National Hospice and Palliative Care Month.
Designed to assist people with serious illness or nearing the end of their lives while respecting the dignity of human life, palliative care helps with pain management, symptoms and stress, and may include curative medicine. Hospice care is a specialized type of palliative care that further addresses comfort and quality of life for the terminally ill.
The USCCB website offers suggestions on how people can help family or friends with serious illness or nearing the end of their lives and warns that a person’s reasons for refusing ordinary treatment or pursuing assisted suicide “are usually rooted in fears of dependency, helplessness, or pain.”
“Try to discover your loved one’s values and how best to honor his or her wishes,” says advice on the website. “This requires true empathy. It can be hard not to assume he or she wants the same thing you think you would want if you were in the same situation. Listen with a nonjudgmental ear, so your loved one feels free to speak openly.”
The same page, usccb.org/end-of-life-care, urges people to allow God to accompany them and the patient in the dying process and says caregivers should be knowledgeable about Church teaching on end-of-life care.
In suggesting resources for the month, Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Va., chairman of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities, wrote to fellow bishops, “In a culture that increasingly disvalues and even threatens the lives of the elderly and terminally ill, this is an important opportunity to educate the faithful on caring for human life until its natural end.”
One document suggested as a resource for parishes says: “Pope Francis has spoken of a ‘throw-away culture’ where victims are the weakest human beings, ‘discarded’ when we aim for efficiency at all costs. John Paul II described this phenomenon as a ‘culture of death,’ in which good and evil are confused. In this culture of waste and death, euthanasia and assisted suicide emerge as erroneous solutions to the challenge of caring for those who are terminally ill. The value of human life, the meaning of suffering, and the significance of the time preceding death are all eclipsed.”
In 2020, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released the letter “Samaritanus bonus: on the care of persons in the critical and terminal phases of life.” The letter reaffirms the Church’s teaching on care for those who are critically ill or dying and offers additional pastoral guidance for increasingly complex situations at the end of life.
Text for the entire letter is available at https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/09/22/200922a.html.
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An old Irish proverb says, “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live,” but when family members or friends approach life’s end, people may not know how best to “shelter” them.
So, as the Catholic Church recognizes All Souls during the month of November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also designated it National Hospice and Palliative Care Month.
Designed to assist people with serious illness or nearing the end of their lives while respecting the dignity of human life, palliative care helps with pain management, symptoms and stress, and may include curative medicine. Hospice care is a specialized type of palliative care that further addresses comfort and quality of life for the terminally ill.
The USCCB website offers suggestions on how people can help family or friends with serious illness or nearing the end of their lives and warns that a person’s reasons for refusing ordinary treatment or pursuing assisted suicide “are usually rooted in fears of dependency, helplessness, or pain.”
“Try to discover your loved one’s values and how best to honor his or her wishes,” says advice on the website. “This requires true empathy. It can be hard not to assume he or she wants the same thing you think you would want if you were in the same situation. Listen with a nonjudgmental ear, so your loved one feels free to speak openly.”
The same page, usccb.org/end-of-life-care, urges people to allow God to accompany them and the patient in the dying process and says caregivers should be knowledgeable about Church teaching on end-of-life care.
In suggesting resources for the month, Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Va., chairman of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities, wrote to fellow bishops, “In a culture that increasingly disvalues and even threatens the lives of the elderly and terminally ill, this is an important opportunity to educate the faithful on caring for human life until its natural end.”
One document suggested as a resource for parishes says: “Pope Francis has spoken of a ‘throw-away culture’ where victims are the weakest human beings, ‘discarded’ when we aim for efficiency at all costs. John Paul II described this phenomenon as a ‘culture of death,’ in which good and evil are confused. In this culture of waste and death, euthanasia and assisted suicide emerge as erroneous solutions to the challenge of caring for those who are terminally ill. The value of human life, the meaning of suffering, and the significance of the time preceding death are all eclipsed.”
In 2020, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released the letter “Samaritanus bonus: on the care of persons in the critical and terminal phases of life.” The letter reaffirms the Church’s teaching on care for those who are critically ill or dying and offers additional pastoral guidance for increasingly complex situations at the end of life.
Text for the entire letter is available at https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2020/09/22/200922a.html.