Ten years after “Amoris Laetitia,” Pope Leo XIV convened the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences at the Vatican Oct. 7-14, with handing on the faith through the family among the themes.
In its section on the elderly, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation notes that grandparents often ensure that the most important values are passed down, and that many people owe their initiation into the Christian life to them. It warns that a society with no room for the elderly, or one that discards them, carries a “deadly virus.” And it reaffirms the right to a natural death, without aggressive treatment and without euthanasia, and calls for accompaniment of the dying.
This year, that teaching is being tested. Illinois’ assisted-suicide law went into effect in September, and New York’s in August, bringing the total number of states permitting intentional killing to 13, plus the District of Columbia. The language of these laws is gentle — “aid in dying” or “death with dignity” — but the question underneath them is blunt, and it is put to the old and ailing as well as to the families who love them: Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if you weren’t here?
The church has answered in the pulpit, in the public square and in court.
In Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), the Supreme Court refused to find a constitutional right to assisted suicide. Now Catholic ministries are in court seeking an exemption from state laws mandating even objecting professionals to inform people of the option.
In July, for example, four orders of nuns and Bishop John Barres of Rockville Centre, N.Y., sued the state of New York in Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. James. In Illinois, Springfield’s Bishop Thomas Paprocki, four doctors and a Lutheran nursing home sued in August, and Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich, two orders of nuns and a pharmacist filed their lawsuit in September.
But the teaching is ultimately about what a family is for, and that is where it becomes personal for me.
Each summer, my youngest children and I spend about a month with my parents. Now that my parents are in their mid-80s, the visit is not easy for them. Their house runs on settled rhythms, and then a houseful of children arrives with noise, laundry and appetites. My mother is gracious. My father wrestles with the irritability that often accompanies physical limitations.
And yet when we leave, something has shifted. My parents have renewed vigor. My father recommits to the senior center on Thursdays, for Scrabble and soup (older people, I have noticed, love soup), and my mother seems a little more connected to her Catholic community. My children carry home fond memories of a small town and a doting grandmother, along with an early education in the hardships of aging and the need for compassion.
I saw similar beauty across generations during more than 10 years living in Colombia. Sunday there means gathering: grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, second cousins and a good number of people everyone calls “cousin” who share no blood at all. I especially admired the expanded Sunday gatherings my sister-in-law’s family hosts, and I was delighted when my eldest daughter joined in during a summer she spent back in her native country after graduating from high school.
Colombia’s courts, however, offer a cautionary tale. In 2022, the Constitutional Court ruled to decriminalize medically-assisted suicide. A strong family culture is no guarantee. It has to be defended on purpose.
Multigenerational life is a delicate dance. Caring for the old is exhausting, and it grows heavier as memory, reason and physical vitality fail. I saw the grace that comes from such sacrifice over the summer when a dear friend and her family cared for her dying father. His last months were a lesson in trust and in the redemptive value of suffering for everyone gathered around his bedside.
This is where handing on the faith, a theme of the Vatican meeting, becomes concrete. Many of the elderly today approach death unsure that God wants them to be with him in heaven. Many fail to turn to the sacraments that prepare the soul for its particular judgment: confession, anointing of the sick and viaticum. Their children and grandchildren are often best placed to help, by praying beside them, calling the priest and speaking plainly about death and God’s mercy.
The assisted-suicide movement persuades because it starts from something true — that dependency is hard and suffering is real — and then offers a tidy answer that removes the problem by removing the person. This is the logic of the “throwaway culture.”
Pope Leo said as much Sept. 27 at Lourdes. He told sick and disabled pilgrims that no human law should make them lose the certainty of their dignity and urged rejecting the temptation to cause death under the guise of “false compassion.”
“What is legal is not necessarily moral,” he said.
Yes, the old and the ill are a burden, in the way anyone we love is a burden. St. Paul told the Galatians to bear one another’s burdens. Taking that seriously means palliative care that treats pain without ending the patient, respite for exhausted caregivers, and families willing to be inconvenienced.
The bishops convened by the Vatican will hear about the challenges of passing on the faith in a secular age. I hope that they also hear about the grandparents, who need their families to help them die well.
A month with my elderly parents in the summer will always upset routines. And I would not trade it for anything.
Piccotti-Bayer, a parishioner of St. John the Beloved Church in McLean, is a legal analyst for EWTN News. Reprinted with permission from the National Catholic Register.
