As a society we vaguely know we ought to be better at facing up to death, to be asking questions about it and thinking ahead about the way we want to die; and now the Catholic church has taken the initiative and updated the Ars Moriendi, or The Art of Dying, a Latin manuscript popular in the 15th century designed to bring Christian comfort and guidance to the dying person and their family. The church has launched a new website, artofdyingwell.org, featuring real-life stories about dying, and interviews with professionals whose work focuses on death, such as palliative care doctors and nurses. And it has interviews with the nearest we get to accounts of what it’s like to die: the voices of those who are terminally ill or who have been close to death, reflecting on what it meant and means.
At a time when the Catholic church’s profile has been seriously dented by scandals, updating The Art of Dying is a positive contribution to society’s communal wellbeing. Some elements of the new site are heavily religious in tone, but there is plenty to draw in somebody of no faith or another faith.
One section, for example, looks at how it actually feels to die, and what we can expect to happen to our bodies when we are in the process of dying. Does dying feel like falling asleep; and what causes the famous “death rattle”? Church leaders and believers have never shied away from the reality of death, because for them it is the transition to a better state of being; but belief should not be a prerequisite for asking questions about what it’s like to die, about how to prepare for it, and about how to go on living in the final shadow of death.
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