For urgent bioethical questions:
Advance Healthcare Directives
Download the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Advance Healthcare Directive and share with your parishioners and family members. This legal document helps everyone know your healthcare wishes. Make copies for your loved ones and your doctor, and keep one with you.
Share Flyers on End of Life Care at Your Parish
Get Involved:
Schedule A Parish Workshop on End of Life Care
Care & Prepare: Finding Loving Care at the End of Life is a parish workshop put on by the Office of Life, Justice & Peace in over 30 parishes throughout the Archdiocese. Discussion topics include Church teaching on end of life ethics, accessing quality palliative care, hospice care and advance healthcare directives, and pastoral care at the end of life. These trainings are great for parish leaders, caregivers, and the elderly and their family members. To schedule Care & Prepare at your parish for free, please call Molly Sheahan at 213-637-7550 or email mcsheahan@la-archdiocese.org.
View Care & Prepare Powerpoints:
Host The Conversation Project
If you've hosted Care & Prepare at your parish, why not have a
Conversation Project Weekend? The Conversation Project is a great way to involve parishioners in talking about their wishes at the end of life and to help adults fill out their
Advance Health Care Directives.
Assisted suicide sends the message that we do not care nor wish to accompany our brothers and sisters at the end of their lives. It affects the poor and the vulnerable, who may be unable to afford expensive treatments but may be pressured to purchase the drugs. Physician Assisted Suicide also increases suicides in general.
Catholic Health Care
Our Catholic hospitals guarantee palliative care for their patients and do not use physician-assisted suicide. Palliative care involves pain management and comfort care. It ensures the dignity of a person, recognizing that even when an illness cannot be cured, a person always deserves the best caring possible. There are also many Catholic care homes in the Archdiocese. For more information, please visit archla.org/health
Other Ways to Get Involved
Pray for the Disabled, Elderly, and Dying in Your Parish
Join the Catholic Legislative Network
Sign up for the Catholic Legislative Network's email alerts so you can raise your voice for the disabled and elderly in the California legislature. Learn about their Whole Person Care Initiative here.
Educate Students with Respect Life Week Curriculum
Our annual Respect Life Week includes information for TK-12 about assisted suicide, end of life ethics, and caring for our elderly neighbors and grandparents.
Educate Yourself and Your Parish with Angelus News Articles:
- California protesters question suicide law
- Assisted suicide opponent remembered for his strength, determination
- A ‘man of steel’ looks to his last Christmas
- Three years later, this terminally ill man is glad he rejected assisted suicide
- Pro-life leaders: Life has value, always
- Euthanasia movement is weaker than it seems, expert says
- Assisted suicide for mental health issues? A Catholic response
- A doctor prescribed a procedure, but insurance offered death
- How assisted suicide discriminates against the poor and disabled
- On 'Aging Gracefully' by Fr. Tad Pacholczyk
- Insurance denied her chemo treatment. But it covered drugs for suicide
- Conscience, Compassion and Healthcare by Archbishop Gomez
- You've got questions (about death)? The Church has answers
- Physician-assisted suicide opposes faith, says leading bioethics expert
- The danger of misunderstanding the 'vegetative state'
- Time to change the conversation by Providence Institute for Human Caring
- The true face of assisted suicide
- Assisted suicide targets the poor and underinsured, opponents argue
- Fundamental injustices in our society by Archbishop Gomez
- Coming to the end of life in California by Archbishop Gomez
- ‘No one needs to die alone’: California Catholics pray, fast for better end-of-life care as state’s assisted suicide law goes into effect
- California crosses an unwelcome threshold with legalization of physician-assisted suicide
- Pope Francis: Let's be clear - assisted suicide is 'false compassion'
- 'As long as there are Christians, no one should have to suffer alone' by Archbishop Gomez
- Abuse, not autonomy