Life's Living toward Dying: A Theological and Medical-Ethical Study - Softcover

Guroian, Vigen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802841902 ISBN 13: 9780802841902

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans-Lightning Source, 1996

Synopsis

In the past several years our culture's long-standing prohibitions against suicide and euthanasia have been seriously challenged. A great tidal change in morality and law may be occurring as the courts seem to be creating a new right - the individual's right to die. In the fall of 1994 the people of Oregon voted to legalize physician-assisted suicide; Michigan's courts continue to acquit Dr. Jack Kevorkian for his involvement in the deaths of more than two dozen patients; and in several states federal appeals courts have struck down statutes that prohibited physician-assisted suicide. In Life's Living toward Dying Vigen Guroian responds to this challenge. He discusses society's moral confusion over the meaning of death and gives a Christian alternative for care of the dying that is consistent with the strong value that the Christian church has ascribed to human life.

About this title

About the Author:

Vigen Guroian is professor of theology and ethics at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, and has served on the faculty of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Seminary in Baltimore since 1986.

From Booklist:

Guroian's book is an extended argument with Jack Kevorkian, not about euthanasia but about whether medicine should be separated from religion. Guroian does not so much argue as assert that it should not be. He evokes a classical Christian understanding of "living toward dying" as antidote both to denial of death and to its too-eager embrace in the "thanatos syndrome." As an antidote, it is not convincing to those who don't already believe it; but readers may find Guroian's weaving of a variety of literary allusions into his evocation of theological tradition instructive as they construct their own responses to death and Dr. Kevorkian. Steve Schroeder

About this edition

• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans-Lightning Source
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0802841902
• ISBN 13: 9780802841902
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96