Good Death?

Q. What is forbidden in the Sixth Commandment?

A. The Sixth Commandment forbiddeth the taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbor unjustly . . .

-- Westminster Shorter Catechism

Though that phrasing is Presbyterian, all Christian denominations believe that suicide violates God's commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Last week, however, the New York Times revealed that one of the world's pre-eminent Presbyterians, the Rev. Henry Pitney Van Dusen, 77, and his wife Elizabeth, 80, had carried out a suicide pact in January. The retired president of New York's Union Theological Seminary and Mrs. Van Dusen took overdoses of sleeping pills in their Princeton, N.J., home. She died quickly, but he vomited up the pills, was found and taken to a hospital, where he died last month of a heart attack.

Suicide is not unknown among clergymen, but typically the circumstances have been blurred by mental illness. Friends said that Van Dusen and his wife, however, were both of sound mind, and they left behind a note declaring that theirs was a responsible decision that "will become more usual and acceptable as the years pass."

Van Dusen had been a nonstop churchman, heading Union at its pinnacle of influence. He continued to be active in retirement until he suffered a stroke five years ago. Thereafter he had little pain and could walk with a cane, but his speech was largely incomprehensible--a severe frustration for a man who had had great verbal skill. Although his wife had undergone two hip operations and suffered from arthritis, she was able to take a trip to Britain a month before her death. The Van Dusen pact, in other words, was not made under the extreme conditions of terminal illness that make many people sympathetic to euthanasia (which means literally "good death"). Rather, their letter stated, "we are both increasingly weak and unwell, and who would want to die in a nursing home?"

God's Hand. As an adviser of the Euthanasia Council, Van Dusen in 1967 proposed that the time might come when persons could decide to have their lives ended in cases of "total mental and spiritual disability." But he supported explicitly only the right to die without being kept alive by heroic measures--a view that Pope Pius XII held. This is called "passive" euthanasia, which in law and morality is treated totally differently from active euthanasia, or "mercy killing."

Many of the Van Dusens' friends, a Who's Who of liberal Protestantism, had discussed the possibility of suicide with them. Some opposed it, others did nothing to discourage it. The three Van Dusen sons are known to differ on the suicide pact, but colleagues were sympathetic last week. "I think they did the right thing," said Ethicist John C. Bennett, Van Dusen's successor at Union.

One of the most forceful statements in opposition came years ago from an illustrious Union alumnus, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis. "God has reserved to himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it," Bonhoeffer wrote. "Even if [a person's] earthly life has become a torment for him, he must commit it intact to God's hand, from which it came."

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