COMMENTARY: Caring for the old can be exhausting, but it teaches the next generation about sacrifice and the redemptive value of suffering.
Ten years after Amoris Laetitia, Pope Leo XIV will convene 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
