On turning 70
Callahan, Daniel
ly, maybe-that by sixty-five most...
...There can't consent of the elderly themselves...
...In the end, then, I can my self-interest in staying alive (an at- on expensive medicine...
...As the laity increasingly take up this work, the term "chapKathleen Reagan lain" has required clarification...
...the United States bishops have concluded that, given the title's unique history here, common usage does not create a confusion between an ordained priest and the lay minister...
...And I can't but notice how many of themwho had said for years that they did not want expensive and useless treatment at the end of their lives-often do in fact want treatment that offers only the faintest hope of doing much good...
...The long-term projections for lem...
...let's try one more round of situation as one where, much like Becoming seventy has not persuaded chemotherapy...
...sign reading "Assembly" marks the room where Even so, some dioceses require that prison chaplains be orinmates worship at Boston's Suffolk County dained...
...These numbers suggest two things: prison ministry is ever more needed, and there are fewer priests to meet the need...
...I was attacked as agist, murderous, had more than the usual interest lately...
...A 1997 Vatican document (Some Questions Regarding Collaboration of Nonordained FaithPRISON MINISTRY ful in Priests' Sacred Ministry) restricted the term to clergy, bu Are Catholics being locked out...
...When I said I was to the passing of the years...
...I see that happening to many of my friends...
...both to the government and to his bishop, but a lay prison Commonweal I I September 8, 2000...
...Research, some say, will During the mid-1980s, I wrote a book, the young (who, after all, actually pay eventually avert the problem, finding Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging through their taxes the Medicare costs of cures for all those deadly and expensive Society, that brought me much attention the old...
...in his eighties, and note the difference in mood...
...I have for them...
...I proposed the "late seventies or to a discovery of the genetic basis of all the road I foresaw an eventual clash of early eighties" but added-not winning- disease, which can then be eliminated...
...During the same period, the prison population has grown by more than a million...
...A priest who is hired as a chaplain is responsible husband actually would turn me in to the FDA...
...ly, maybe-that by sixty-five most people had lived a full life, and that while DANIEL CALLAHAN there was more they could do with their lives, death in old age was a sad, but not tragic, event...
...this world...
...A savings account system, more market choice, or greater efficiency, say others, will avert a crisis...
...wait until you are really old But seventy was different...
...If the present rate of growth continues, there will be 2 million by the end of 2001...
...The Genome Project will lead and even more criticism...
...The only solution I could en- what it would be like to be old, sick, and makes one sit up and take notice, espe- vision, when the conflict became over- denied Medicare reimbursement to save cially someone like myself who-maybe whelming, would be to set an age limit my life...
...Compare the funeral of a OH TURNING 70 child with that of someone who has died Will I practice what I preach...
...I would vote for tolerate the idea of an age limit because titude hardly anyone in our society such a limit with trepidation, knowing I take aging and death to be a part of would now call selfish), which will no that I (and others like me) could be de- human life, and not a wholly evil part...
...Death," the CEO of a major biotechnology company recently said, "is nothing but a series of preventable diseases...
...incredibly large Medicare deficits were and-most tellingly-lacking insight in I recently turned seventy, an age that fearsome...
...ried chaplains with children can offer seasoned advice to But he worries more about losing the room altogether...
...I see the a few more years of life...
...Looking down age...
...obligations to provide good health care course painless-solutions depend upon There is also another reason, which for the old, the old in turn have an oblig- astonishingly large acts of scientific or many have pointed out to me...
...In addition to province of professional lay ministers, will the ministry lose counseling, chaplains also provide religious education and its Catholic character...
...In 1980, all but two members of the American Catholic Correctional Chaplains Association (ACCCA) were ordained priests...
...A House of Corrections...
...Should I, therefore, change my the- people of what they need to live decent case that one of the great evils to be put oretical views, bringing them more in lives and to have a chance of becoming on that list is the fact that elderly people line with nasty old reality, in this case old-then I would support an age limit get sick and die...
...and, moreover, good long-term and home care, So here I am at seventy, getting there...
...MassachuWilliams's problems provide a metaphor for the ques- setts chaplain Deacon "Buzz" Taylor and his wife Mary obtions facing Catholic prison ministry today...
...could only be done with the democratic no wonder...
...and, and know what you are talking about...
...How old are you anyway...
...Maring to get the prison administration to change it to "Chapel...
...and the number of religious men and women has dropped by some thirty-two thousand...
...As the number serve that inmates view them in a parental role-probably of Catholic priests dwindles and prison ministry becomes the the first such positive contact many have had...
...ation not to make excessive demands on economic faith...
...I don't believe it and, in any case, what will I say when I get critically ill and the expenses mount...
...doubt show its hand at some point...
...If, and be a social tragedy, even if it is not sometougher and of better character than I only if, we reach a point in this country thing I look forward to...
...The world has am, I have no reason to believe I would when the health-care costs of the elder- many problems-war, poverty, violence, be any more resistant to the lure of ex- ly become insupportable-by which I racism, exploitation of others-but I have pensive technological rescues than they mean they are dearly depriving younger never heard anyone make a plausible are...
...Efficiency, one of the great gods in the American pantheon of secular deities, is almost as good as research in getting rid of what ails us...
...Just what would be the cutoff diseases...
...In the last fifteen years, the number of priests in the United States has declined by more than ten thousand...
...Out of the priest shortage is emerging the new institutional chaplain, with attendant changes in prison ministry...
...They clutch at straws, defer to their families' wishes, or are seduced by well-meaning physicians who say "it's too early to Commonweal 10 September 8, 2000 give up hope...
...fifty-seven (the year the book was pubwas there a crisis at thirty, forty, fifty, If this became necessary, I argued, it lished), a common response was, "well, or even sixty...
...An age limit was not then, nor would have long been interested two great forces, the growing number it be now, a popular suggestion-even in the relationship between and proportion of elderly people and though no one then or now has offered I our moral theories, values, the increasingly successful, but expen- a better way of dealing with what will and convictions, and our sive, ways of providing medical care one of these days be an intractable probactual experience of the world...
...for another, I can hardly fail to notice and basic primary medical care, would I haven't really changed my views, mainthat the downhill pace of aging seems to never be denied...
...I surprisingly-never gave much thought on high technology, even life-extend- was constantly asked...
...Today, of its 183 members, 39 percent are ordained priests, 20 percent laypeople, 19 percent permanent deacons, 19 percent religious sisters, and 3 percent religious brothers...
...While the young have ly because most of the alternative and of pick up considerably about this time...
...Increasingly, whether priests or not, chaplains are hired and supervised as state or federal government em- "He always joked about it, but I never thought my ployees...
...El chaplain is subject only to secular authority...
...Ulysses, we need to bind ourselves to me that my death from here on in would Since that happens to people who are the mast to avoid temptation...
...prisoners trying to hold their families together...
...be many years left, for one thing...
...Today, we have 1.86 million people in prison...
...Not for me ing technology...
...George Williams, S.J., the In certain respects, lay ministers and ordained deacons prison chaplain and a religious brother, is try- have an advantage over priests in counseling prisoners...
...prived of that which would give them There are far worse things that happen in No, I hope I won't do that...
Vol. 127 • September 2000 • No. 15
