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The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, director of the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York City, said there are serious concerns about going down a slippery slope of medical ethics by withholding care based on utilitarian models of who is worthy or not worthy of life.

At the same time, he said, there is no moral obligation to prolong someone's dying.

"The most elementary and in many ways the most difficult thing for all of us is to know we're not God," Neuhaus said. "We're mortal."

Taking disproportionate, last-minute measures to prolong life can be "resurrection-denying in some ways," said the Rev. Donald Dunson, a moral theologian at St. Mary Seminary in Wickliffe, Ohio.

"My death does not belong to me," Dunson said. "I belong to God. I belong to another."

After the pope died on Saturday, Pilla spoke with wonder about "what a witness he has given, not only how to live, but how to die."

Pilla said John Paul showed the world in his final days that every human life has value, not only when people are healthy, vibrant and strong.

The bishop said it was significant that when it came time for the pope to accept death, he chose not to do it in a hospital, but in his residence where thousands of pilgrims could be with him in his final hours. "He remained to the end with his people," Pilla said.

David Briggs writes for The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

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April (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49