Christopher Hitchens wrote:Thus, and as with the Schiavo case, every last morsel of misery has been compulsorily extracted from the business of death.
I overheard someone in the coffeehouse recounting what someone on radio had been talking about. That the Pope (any Pope) does something noteworthy by remaining visible and in office until the very end. He rehabilitates, so to say, suffering, old age, illness, death itself. In our modern world, those are things we sanitise away into unseen dimensions: curtained beds in the hospital, quiet retirement in a suburbian old age people's home. You're not supposed to be old in public, not supposed to be on TV when you're gravely ill, weak or decrepit. Our modern age does not believe in suffering - we deny it or airbrush it away, and believe in positive thinking instead. You can be whatever you want to be! (And if you're weak or unable, it's thus your own fault). DIY books tell you how to save yourself from any suffering or even awkwardness - just say no to it, change your job, change your wife, do up your face with botox, fight the teeth of time and insist on adhering to the ideal of everlasting beauty and youth. And once you cant anymore, please get out of our face and hide yourself in retirement. Well, said this guy: the Pope reminded us that suffering is part of life. That as sure as we are born, we will grow old, we will suffer and we will die. By doing so in public, without shirking back, he showed us that one can accept it with self-respect - and die without being ashamed of it.
Something like that. Thought it was an interesting take.
