On Martyrdom, Suicide, and Christian Bioethics.

Christ has fashioned a remedy for the human condition out of mortality, making death the paradoxical means of salvation. Thus, the early Church saw martyrdom as the best kind of death, epitomized in the story of St. Ignatius of Antioch. He saw his death in Christ to be a birth into eternal life. Yet martyrdom and suicide can be conflated under crafty definitions and novel terminology, leading inevitably to calls to soften prohibitions against physician-assisted suicide. Whereas martyrdom locates death within the Christian lived experience of the Paschal mystery, suicide transfers the sovereignty of God over life and death to the individual, necessarily denying the goodness of creation in the process. I point to a liturgical foundation for bioethics as a better starting point for understanding martyrdom and suicide. Entering Christ's sacrifice, Christians receive divine life and new vision to locate suffering, death, and health care within the Christian salvation narrative. SUMMARY: Confusing martyrdom and suicide locates ethics outside the Church by bending language around the 5th commandment. St. Ignatius of Antioch's martyrdom clarifies the role of the Christian bioethicist to situate health care in the Church's life-giving liturgical experience.

Searching for Meaning with Victor Frankl and Walker Percy.

Patients present to physicians searching for more than scientific names to call their maladies. They rather enter examination rooms with value-laden narratives of illness, suffering, hopes, and worries. One potentially helpful paradigm, inspired in part by existentialism, is to see patients on a search for meaning. This perspective is particularly important in the seemingly meaningless ruins of modernity. Here, we will summarize Victor Frankl's account of logotherapy found in his much-circulated book Man's Search for Meaning and assess the limitations imposed by his religious agnosticism. At best he can offer patients a finite, impersonal meaning this side of the grave. Following Kierkegaard's depiction of the religious sphere of existence, American novelist Walker Percy will be shown to supplement logotherapy with a theological mooring. The spiritual crisis of the modern world is treatable only by Christian faith supplying ultimate meaning. Taken together, Frankl and Percy show how Catholic physicians can be guides in their patients' personal searches for meaning. This paradigm may prove chiefly beneficial in goals of care conversations, encountering "aesthetic" patients living only for pleasure, and engaging patients amidst tragedy-ridden circumstances. Although only Christian faith will ultimately satisfy the search for meaning, we first of all need encouragement to take responsibility for seeking meaning, and confidence that even the most hopeless situation can become meaningful. SUMMARY: Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning can enlighten clinical encounters for physicians to see patients on a search for meaning, particularly amidst suffering and tragedy in a post-modern world lacking transcendence. As shown in Walker Percy's literature, however, ultimate meaning can only be found in Christian faith where the Word became flesh and continues to dwell among us.