My presentation this morning is going to be slightly different than what we had last evening.

I consider it mostly a review of basic principles that we've all learned, or certainly at least

touched upon while we were in seminary formation. But my hope is that our time together will help us to understand why some of

these principles are true and at work and how we can articulate those principles when dealing with

patients and families that are nearing the end of life or having difficulties making tough decisions with regard to their medical care.

So we're going to be speaking briefly.

There's an outline about an introduction, after this introduction on the inalienable dignity of life.

Talk a little bit about moral choices and double effect.

Obligatory and optional treatment,

which is a moral decision and not a medical one.

Euthanasia, what it is, an assisted suicide,

which is, of course, the big issue of the day.

We'd be talking about that towards the end of my presentation.

How that is distinguished from allowing a person to die from a pathology or from their illness, and, of course,

the primacy that we give to care, especially with nutrition and hydration.

And then I will close my presentation by turning to some secular voices about the quality of life.

This is, I think, the issue that we're going to be fighting and we're going to be facing for the foreseeable future.

And then I'll offer some concluding thoughts on futility and hope.

St. John Paul, and hope.

St. John Paul II famously said in Evangelion Beatay, that man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence because it consists

in sharing the very life of God.

The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness

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