Editorials
CONTENTS Volume CXVIII, Number 17 Correspondence 562 Editorials 563 The sounds of Spanglish: Ilan Stavans 564 Poetry: Ernest Kroll 565 Hitting home: Abigail McCarthy 566 ...
...Petersburg, we invite the Soviet peoples, out of concern for our tonsils, to get rid of some other place names, e.g., Yakustsk, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Borisoglebsk, Dneprodzerzhinsky, etc...
...Even if the larger meaning of life is no longer readily apparent to me, its bearer, its significance nonetheless remains entwined in the larger skein of human endeavor and divine intention...
...In sum, our society's efforts to control and stave off death by medical intervention is in danger of evolving into a readiness to assist in bringing it about...
...Even when the individual feels his or her life no longer has meaning, has been deprived of a sense of autonomy, or should not be held hostage to someone else's definition of life's value, society cannot legitimate assisting or accelerating that individual's premature death...
...Simon & Schuster...
...There are other resources elsewhere: Mexico: Xicohtencat...
...Here the guidelines of traditional moral theology have much to offer...
...ET CETERA LUBRICATE YOUR LARYNX Now that aprece- dent has been set, with the change from Lehingrad (which was at least pronounceable) back to St...
...There are various explanations, the most important of which is that as a cohesive group, the community is in constant change...
...Death, by its nature, is not a shameful thing...
...It is a steadily downward path from there...
...Jack Kevorkian's Thanatron machine and its effective demonstration in the suicide of Janet Atkins last year in Michigan...
...Medicine must both acknowledge and teach us its limits in staving off for a time our natural end, our own mortality...
...His or her value is incommensurable and inherent...
...and are the second-fastest growing minority after the Asians and Pacific Islanders, are taking a long time to learn English...
...August 14, 1991...
...Commonweal,[ISSN0010-3330]AReviewofPublic Affairs,Religion,Literature,andtheArts,ispublished biweekly,exceptmonthlyChristmas,NewYear'sand Julyand August,byCommonwealFoundation,15 DutchSt.,NewYork,N.Y.10038.Telephone:(212) 732-0800.Displayadvertisingcorrespondenceshould be sent to Ruth E. Taylor, 11 GraffamRd., So...
...Or rather, who speaks what kind of Spanish...
...It has, as Hans Jonas has noted, its own fitness, its own dignity...
...For a man stamps many coins in one mold and they are alike...
...And those credentialed to protect life are being licensed to take it...
...The dilemma becomes especially acute when those to whom we entrust the care 11 October 1991:563 of the sick and dying, physicians and nurses, themselves fall prey to the despair of a Trumbull or an Atkins...
...To shield the fragile hope of those who are dying against the despair that can cloud our inescapable mortality is a necessary and ceaseless task, for physicians, for everyone...
...Daniel Callahan, WhatKindofLife...
...From the U.S...
...567 Disarming Austin Fagothey: James W. Douglass 569 Looking into the night: Leonard A. Temme 572 Ecclesia semper reformanda: An exchange of views: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, Thomas A. McCabe 574 Screen: Richard Alleva 580 Stage: Gerald Weales 582 BOOKS Gerard Manley Hopkins: Edward Wheeler 583 A Hole in the World/Someday: Michael O. Garvey 585 Religious booknotes: Lawrence S. Cunningham 587 STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Paul Baumann Production Editor: Jacqueline Dowdell Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Movies: Richard Alleva Stage: Gerald Weales Poetry: Rosemary Deen Columnists: John Garvey, J. Bryan Hehir, Abigail McCarthy, David R. Carlin, Jr...
...but the King who is the king of all kings...stamped every man in the mold of the first man, yet not one of them resembles his fellows," thus a teaching of the Midrash...
...As several recent events signal, that "before time" is increasingly taking center stage in the public debate over dying: .9 Dr...
...CONTENTS Volume CXVIII, Number 17 Correspondence 562 Editorials 563 The sounds of Spanglish: Ilan Stavans 564 Poetry: Ernest Kroll 565 Hitting home: Abigail McCarthy 566 Bigots & bluster: David R. Carlin, Jr...
...The Supreme Court, in Cruzan, recognized a patient's right to die, a position in keeping with traditional medical and moral ethics...
...Staff: Harriette Balsky, Carmen Alava, Pamela Quatse Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor Publisher: Edward S. Skillin Unsolicitedmanuscriptsarewelcomebutcannotbe considered or returned unless accompaniedby a stamped, self-addressedenvelope...
...To which Granny Barnacle---one of Granny Valvona's aged compatriots in the Maud Long Medical Ward--stoutly rejoins: "But not before time...
...So when dying is seen to be shameful, and the dying feel they are, or will be, shunned, we need to ask why...
...And then there is the American credo of autonomy and personal independence, a national predilection incisively captured in the title of the recent play, "Whose Life Is It, Anyway...
...Whose business is it, really...
...To rip it out prematurely is to endanger human solidarity by 564: Commonweal impairing more than this single strand, cutting it off from the weaver's cloth...
...Turkey: Yavsatuzlasi...
...In the Roman Catholic tradition, human life is considered sacred and inviolable, but it is not considered an absolute...
...And, good American that she is, she answers, "...but my own and that of those I love...
...Though our own understanding of this is rooted in a religious reality, that Christ has triumphed over death, and so shall we, it is an understanding that also has to be nourished in the best and most generous instincts of civil society: Our care for the sick, the vulnerable, the dying is a mark of our deepest character...
...Portland,Me.04106(207)799-4387,classifiedadver-tisingcorrespondenceto15DutchSt.POSTMASTER: Sendaddresschangesto Commonweal,15 Dutch St...
...In the latter case, society is being asked to approve a form of state-sanctioned murder...
...It need not...
...Chillikodratna (Alaska...
...But "letting die" is totally different from euthanasia or state-approved physician aid-in-dying...
...Louis: Catholic Health Association...
...It is an inherited gift, and as such, has meaning not only for oneself but for those who bestowed it, those who have shared it, and those who will follow...
...In too many cases modern medical technologies are simply prolonging dying and heightening a patient's anxieties as well as those of families and friends...
...9 Final Exit, Derek Humphrey's detailed how-to suicide manual, has become a best seller...
...It is because of the interrelated nature of human life--its broader solidarity and spiritual dimension--that human beings have an instinctive interest not just in the maintenance of them- selves and the continuation of their immediate families and friends, but in the prospects for human life and the solidarity of the human community...
...Not before time 6 i 'm ready to meet my God, any time," Granny Valvona remarks I in Muriel Spark's novel, Memento Mori...
...Tonganoxie (Kans...
...Hispanics, who according to the 1990 census total more than 22 million in the U.S...
...Wales: Ystwythand Clwyd.And surely the people of Zyudostinkskiy (a Soviet island in the Caspian) would be more comfortable with Xiachengzi, which of course is in Heilongjiang, which of course is in China...
...Modem Chicanos, or Mexican...
...But this is not the only driving force behind the efforts to legitimate euthanasia...
...Human life does not derive its unique value merely from its usefulness--whether to oneself or to others...
...If we continue to seek with our present obsessiveness.., ever more control over our bodily fate, we can be certain of ever greater despair when we fail to achieve it...
...she asks...
...they could borrow such sweetly flowing syllables as Quonochontaug (R.I...
...In providing medical treatment for critically ill patients, the choices made must be proportionate to the total well-being of a patient, and the means chosen must be reasonable...
...Two "new" diseases, AIDS and Alzheimer's, whose natural trajectory spark the fear of a prolonged and painful dying, raise questions about the meaning of those lives subject to pernicious forms of depersonalization...
...What is morally obligatory depends on what is proportionate and contributes to the patient's total good" (Richard M. Gula, "Principled and Virtuous Care of the Dying: A Catholic Response to Euthanasia," St...
...Venezuela: Waukarlycarly...
...NewYork,N.Y.10038...
...Medicine, and the mindset that supports its never-ending quest for "a cure," must realize that its own hubris has contributed to the loss of trust among patients and would-be patients--ultimately, all of us...
...Have we or our society--whether out of fear, or lack of compassion, or the pursuit of technological medical solutions failed to support others in their agony, to relieve their pain and sense of isolation, to pay them proper attention, to recognize that the dying are still among the living, not the dead...
...Though it must, like all of us, finally bow to death, medicine must never directly assist our dying...
...Ultimately, of course, it is a gift, willed and sustained by God...
...Thus, New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen, having read Final Exit out of curiosity, announces to her readers that she is going to save the book and its suicide instruction for the day she may need it...
...Okaloacochee (Fla...
...Nor is human life merely the possession of the one who bears it...
...This press to hurry the inevitable is the dark side of medicine's increasing ability to delay, unnaturally and unnecessarily, the "inevitable...
...9 Washington State's euthanasia Initiative 119, coming up for a vote November 5 (see Commonweal, August 9...
...Then even the ancient cardinal principle of medicine--Do no harm--will be made to seem archaic and fall to the logic of technologized medicine...
...Each person is unique, never to be repeated...
...REPORT ON HISPANIC AMERICA THE SOUNDS OF ANGr NEITHER CERVANTES NOR SHAKESPEARE ho speaks Spanish in the United States...
...9 a Rochester, New York, grand jury's refusal to indict and the state Health Department's refusal to discipline Dr...
...Rather, it must do the opposite: Show care for that individual by lessening his or her suffering to the fullest extent possible...
...Timothy E. Quill for assisting in the suicide of Diane Trumbull, a cancer patient...
Vol. 118 • October 1991 • No. 17
