The New York Times is reporting that a study will be released today that shows religious terminal patients are much more likely to request aggressive efforts to stave off death compared to the non devout, Religious Belief Linked to Desire for Aggressive Treatment in Terminal Patients:
Terminally ill cancer patients who drew comfort from religion were far more likely to seek aggressive, life-prolonging care in the week before they died than were less religious patients and far more likely to want doctors to do everything possible to keep them alive, a study has found.
I found this article very interesting, but I don't want to broadcast any of my personal conclusions on it because I think most any speculation as to intent would be pretty false. Certainly Catholics are taught of the primary value of life and I can see that encouraging many people to seek to prolong their lives. Many other Christian denominations have similar views but their could be a host of other reasons as well.
Regardless of what we take away from the article, thinking of facing death does remind me of a portion of For Whom the Bell Tolls in which Pilar is telling the story of Pablo's ferocity in the taking of a small Spanish town at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. In executing the priest, Pablo was very disappointed that the priest didn't make a better show of it but instead, tucked his skirts and ran from his executioners with no dignity.
It is a brutal story that Pilar tells, one of those times in literature in which we nakedly see how different people face horrendous deaths and the priest's death is one of the most horrible. When you are being slaughtered by a crazed mob there is no room for dignity:
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