What is in Kelvin's Head?

End of Life (aka Death)

29/05/2015

I was pleased this week that the vote in the Scottish Parliament to change the law on so-called assisted dying didn’t manage to make any further progress. Parliamentarians have now had a number of chances to think about this and vote on it and it still failed comprehensively to get anywhere near a majority of parliamentarians supporting it.

Yet in survey after survey we are told that people support it.

What’s going on?

It seems to me that any of us would be frightened of finding ourselves in a situation where we were left alone and in pain. People do die bad deaths alone and in pain in Scotland. Somehow many people then manage to make a jump in their heads to saying that the law should be changed to allow people to request help to end their lives.

I can’t make that jump myself. The current situation seems to me to be the right one. I have no problem with the idea that a doctor might give a treatment that improved the quality of someone’s life whilst knowing that the life itself might be shortened by doing so. I do have a problem with a drug being given or withheld where the very purpose is to hasten life.

To put it bluntly, if people are frightened of the idea of individuals dying alone and in pain then there are things we can do about that that fall a long way short of killing people off.

I don’t want to see the law changed but I do want to see a lot of things surrounding death to be changed.

I want hospices to be better funded.
I want more palliative care consultants to be trained.
I want money to be put into pain clinics.
I want more research to be put into pain relief.
And I want us to talk a bit more honestly about who should be with the dying if we don’t want dying people to die alone. Who would actually benefit from lives being shortened at will? The patient is not the only person affected by a death, nor the only possible person to derive any “benefit” from life being cut short.

These are so sensitive things to talk about and there are far more issues involved in decisions about end of life care than could ever be resolved in a bill in parliament.

It is good that people are talking about this more. The “death cafe” movement seems to me to be a good thing. Allowing people who are living to talk about the business of dying has to be positive. Sometimes we get into those kind of issues when I’m doing my “Plan your own funeral” workshop – which I’ve just been asked to do in other parts of the diocese too.

I recently conducted the funeral of someone who had had that kind of conversation about his funeral just a couple of weeks before he actually died. It was the most profound thing to have happened, and in the end one of the most profound and beautiful funerals that left me completely in awe of the person who had died and the plans he had made.

Parliamentarians have difficult decisions to make here. We all do. But the priority must be to protect the vulnerable. My judgement is different to the judgement of many and even maybe the majority. I don’t think the vulnerable would be best served by changing the law.

Doctors need to be able to make informed decisions and help others to make informed decisions but we are in an area where sometimes decisions will be tested hard. I’m not alone in thinking that things have become harder for many doctors since Harold Shipman’s crimes were revealed. No doctor wants to be accused to acting too swiftly. No health authority wants to risk harbouring someone who simply wants to kill. But we must be wary of restrictions on care that might prevent doctors taking action which relieves pain where that might be possible.

If I were dying and in terrible pain, would I not want my life to be ended more quickly and more intentionally and more humanely? Well maybe I would. But I’m not the only person in the world and that description of someone dying doesn’t come close to the complexity of what really happens when someone’s life is drawing to a close. There are far more people to think about – not just relatives but those who will die after we do.

So yes, I want pain to be relieved. Yes, I can imagine situations where I’d prefer to die than to live. But no, for the good of those who are vulnerable, for the good of those whose deaths would be a relief to others, for the good of those who are vulnerable and often least able to make autonomous choices, for all their sakes, I don’t think that the law should be changed.

death, death cafe, dying, end of life, funeral

41 responses to “The Columba Declaration”

Edward Andrews

11/02/2016

As Anglicans get down to the important issue of the niceties of Theology, lets get into the broad brush situation.
The relationships between the Churches of the Celtic tradition and the Southern tradition have been fraught since the 7th Century (Whitby). Part of the whole question surrounding the war of Independence (and before with King David was teh independence of the Scottish Church.
The irony is that the present attempt is to bring the Churches of the united Kingdom together may well blow back on them. While the Kirk today doesn’t mean much in Scotland the most secular part of the UK I’m not convinsed that playing footise over Bishops is going to impress the older members – the ones who voted No.
The fact is that the Scottish Episcopal Church has the Anglican franchise in Scotland. It is an authentic Scottish Church (especially if you ignore the instances when it has gone to England for Episcopal ordination.) and to negotiate over its head about something so sensitive it at the best discourteous.
Those of the reformed tradition don’t get wound up by the antics of a few Episcopalians. We seek whatever degree of true unity is available to us, but do not see the need for uniformity. I spent some very pleasant years as a guest of the Scottish Episcopal Church when the climate of the Kirk became unattractive to me, and am grateful for the table fellowship which I received.
The site of two big boys presuming to set things up is not pleasing. For the information of those who want to get up tight about the real presence, that is what the reformed tradition believes, we are Calvinists not followers of Zwingli. I am not going to seek to discuss which Greer philosopher we get our understanding of existence from.

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Father David

12/02/2016

Father Ron: let us not forget that the great Arthur Michael Ramsey was born an ecumenical baby. His maternal Grandfather was Vicar of Horbling in Lincolnshire and his paternal Grandfather was a Congregationalist Minister. His Anglican Grandfather baptised him and when in adult years he visited Horbling parish church he was deeply moved when standing by the font – the place where this great man of God began his Christian pilgrim journey. However, as a child he worshipped with his family at the Congregationalist church in Cambridge. To the great benefit of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion – the kind of High Jinks that took place next door at Little St. Mary’s proved to be an attractive magnet and so the pull of Anglo-Catholicism brought to us a spiritual giant and a contender (in company with William Temple) for the title of the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury of the 20th century and a man who yearned and longed for Christian Unity.
Edward Andrews: Even as we all long and hope for the unity of all Christians your words are wise when you point to unity not uniformity.

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Keith Barber

12/02/2016

Cynic I may be, but my first response is to ask what is the hidden agenda. For I’m pretty certain there will be one, whether it’s about trying to create an ecclesiastical bulwark against disintegration of the UK or get ++Welby an ally or two in the aftermath of the huge and hostile reaction to the Anglican Primates’ decision to punish TEC (sorry Kelvin) for its moves towards inclusion of LGBT people.

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1. Jeremy Bates
  
  13/02/2016
  
  Or perhaps it’s like the Easter-calendar announcement–a convenient way of changing the subject, at Synod and elsewhere.
  
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Father Ron Smith

12/02/2016

Whatever the motivation for this ‘secret’ accord with the Church of Scotland; simple courtesy would require that the Church of England promoters consult with their Episcopally governed equivalent in Scotia.

Another point is this; do the Presbyerians realise that they may have signed up to the catholic premise of recognition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion? Are they happy with that?

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1. Edward Andrews
  
  12/02/2016
  
  Well actually the Presbyterians believe “Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.” You will see the word real is there. Don’t know what the 39 articles say you believe.
  Those of us who are big on the real presence use the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian understanding of reality.
  
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  1. Father Ron Smith
    
    12/02/2016
    
    Not believers, then, in con-substantiation? Freely translated as bread and wine ‘together with’ the Body and Blood of Christ? Note, not the more literal trans-substantiation, which would nean the disappearance of the bread and wine. (although as some of my more scientific friends would say, this is a tautology.
    
    What all must agree on, though, is that some members of the Church of England, and many of its constituent partner Churches of the Anglican Communion, do have a problem with the ‘Real Presence’ – a reality that, for me, and I suspect most Anglican Catholics, means that the substance of the bread and wine consecrated at the Eucharist is truly “The Body and Blood of Christ” in accordance with the dominical instruction: “This IS my Body, my Blood” (Not, you will notice, “this REPRESENTS my Body, my Blood”). ‘A Sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’ – this saying sums it all up pretty well, I think
    
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    1. Kelvin
      
      12/02/2016
      
      I think it is time to draw the discussion about the real presence to a close on this comment thread. It is hardly the main point and I’ve never ever known a comment thread about transubstantiation to be constructive.
      
      Comments on the Columba Declaration welcome. Comments trying to explain what transubstantiation *really* means – not so much.
      
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      1. Edward Andrews
        
        12/02/2016
        
        Thank you Kelvin. As I see it the C of E has come poaching in your preserves. This is wrong and unhelpful. If there were going to be Anglican/Presbyterian dialogue the SEC should be the lead player. I have my own problems with the declaration as a Member of the Church of Scotland who seeks an end to the United Kingdom. However as a Catholic Christian I am in solidarity with my SEC brothers and sisters who have been left out of the loop. Both the Cof E synod and the Kirk’ General Assembly should reject the document, but I don’t suppose that they will.
Augur Pearce

16/02/2016

A contribution to the ‘establishment’ discussion: In my book the terms ‘establish’ and ‘Church of England’ both have more than one meaning. ‘Establish’, for example, can mean ‘set up, bring into existence’ (sense E1), or it can mean ‘endow, privilege’ (sense E2).

Most people who use it of the C of E use it in sense E2, and they understand the C of E (in what I might call sense C3) as an association with its own rules, distinct from the English nation but privileged by law in various ways (with some concomitant obligations).

In fact I think this describes the C of S position fairly well, but is quite wrong as regards the C of E. The C of E (I contend) is not distinct from the kingdom of England, it is that kingdom ‘wearing its spiritual hat’ (sense C1). England, as church, has various spiritual responsibilities to discharge, and in order to do so, it establishes (=creates; sense E1), by its law, a complex of specialist institutions, offices, rules, and assets which itself becomes known derivatively as the C of E (sense C2).

One clear example of how the C of E (in sense C1) and the C of S have been differently understood from very early times is found in comparing Richard Hooker’s well-known words ‘There is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England…’ with the Church Act 1567, declaring those ‘quha outher gainsayis the word of the Evangell ressavit and apprevit as the heidis of the Confessioun of Faith professit in Parliament of befoir in the yeir of God 1560 … or that refusis the participatioun of the haly sacramentis as thay ar now ministrat, to be na memberis of the said Kirk within this realme now presently professit’.

The Church of England, in short, is simply England; the Church of Scotland is a privileged sectional group.

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1. Seph
  
  17/02/2016
  
  If this be so, it strikes me as uncomfortably caesaropapist. This may be one of the things that makes me uncomfortable when I am down south and find myself in a C of E church.
  
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