Recovering an Ars Moriendi

In this special issue of The Linacre Quarterly we are pleased to present several articles which touch upon two increasingly important areas of clinical medicine and for which morally perilous circumstances exist. The two areas are geriatrics, the subspecialty focused in the medical care of the elderly, and care at the end of life. The former, in light of the aging of society, is forcing us to examine our attitudes toward the elderly. End-of-life care too, in part because of an increased number of elderly, but also because (as one of us, JMT, unimaginatively reminds his students), “humanity is associated with 100% mortality,” will always remain of great relevance to physicians. Physicians whose practice involves either area are served well by maintaining a clear view of the multiple dimensions and complexities sometimes attending the dying person, and of death itself. This may be especially important when there appears to be a perverted view of death and dying as exists within a “culture of death,” (the term coined by Blessed John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae). In many ways today, the dying process has become impersonal and disconnected from transcendent and spiritual realities. The art of dying, prominent in past times, and useful by helping individuals understand and even appreciate dying as a part of living, has been lost. We propose for consideration, the need to recover an ars moriendi: to re-capture and enhance an ethos of end-of-life care intended to recast the dying process in a way that offsets, if not frankly impedes a death culture agenda.