IN BRIEF
Hungary: two great priestly figures The beginning of the priestly year in Hungary was marked by celebrations for two important anniversaries: the 70th year of priesthood of Placid Olofsson, the “eternally-young Benedictine monk” who suffered many years in the gulags, and the tenth anniversary of the Episcopal ministry of Msgr. Balázs Bábel, the bishop of Kalocsa-Kecskemét. Father Olofsson, born in 1916, was awarded the Pro Ecclesia Award in 2006 by Hungary’s Bishops’ Conference, “for his exemplary and faithful humanity, that he bore witness to in all circumstances”. During the many years he spent in the gulags where he was confined by the Soviet military court in 1943, the religious introduced four “rules of life” for himself and his companions: “Suffering must not become more dramatic than it is, since it makes man weaker”; “Suffering arrives by itself, we must not seek it. We must seek joy in life, even small joys” are the first two rules. He organized “the Olympics of joy” to help others endure the suffering of the gulag. It consisted in a competition whereby convicts in the lager competed for the greatest amount of joy experienced during the day. “We must stop complaining, we must stop saying we’re innocent. We need to prove that we are better than those who condemned us” is the third rule. The last ‘rule of life’ is, “Men of faith endure more suffering that those who have none”. At the age of 93 Father Olofsson continues holding pre-marriage courses and catechesis for adults, along with spiritual exercises in Budapest, in villages and abroad. “I wish the bishopric became a paternal home for all”, said bishop Bábel in the homily delivered a few days ago in the Cathedral of Kalocsa during the thanksgiving Mass for the tenth anniversary of his Episcopal ministry. Underlining the importance “for Christians to recover unity and erect stable communities”, the prelate declared “that in this moment of crisis, the bishop, man of God, has the task of transmitting force unto others”.The Netherlands: cases of euthanasia on the increase “Physicians’ difficult relationship with palliative medicine could be the reason for the increase in cases of euthanasia in The Netherlands”. In the radio programme Dit is de dag (This is the day) Ben Crul, Professor emeritus of pain therapy at the University of Nijmegen, considered the possible link between the number of cases of euthanasia and doctors’ negative experiences with palliative sedation. Cases of euthanasia have increased by 10 per cent over the past years in The Netherlands. The number of requests, amounting to 1.900, reached 2100 in 2007 and exceeded 2300 in 2008. According to Crul many doctors view euthanasia as being less complex than palliative sedation, especially when sedation is insufficient in keeping symptoms under control. “The increase in the cases of euthanasia is surprising”, Crul said, “since in the past years, treatment of the terminally ill has greatly improved”. He ascribes responsibility to general practitioners, “whose poor knowledge of the subject matter and the negative experiences of sedation have led to accept euthanasia requests with a superficial approach”. Another cause could also be the scarce knowledge of palliative treatment on the part of the patients. In the course of the years – since social and political debate on the subject sparked off in 1983, and in 2001, the year in which this practice became legal, and on many other occasions – Dutch bishops voiced their strong opposition of euthanasia, whilst defending the right to palliative treatment. At the end of 2007 the archbishop of Utrecht, Jacobus Eijk, responsible for ethical issues within the Dutch Bishops’ Conference, addressed the question in an article published on the review ‘Medicine and Morals’, that briefed on the bishops’ position on euthanasia and retraced its stages pointing out that the moral limits set in the past were being constantly and dangerously crossed. Another point that emerged in the stands taken by the Dutch Bishops’ Conference guarded against improvements in euthanasia procedures which, Eijk recalled, “does not make it acceptable from the ethical standpoint”, since “ethical evaluation is determined by content”.
