Pro-life leader urges parish care for housebound

Fr Shenan Boquet from the United States gave a presentation at St Thomas More Parish in Mt Maunganui last month exploring end-of-life care and what it truly means to uphold human dignity.

Speaking against euthanasia and assisted suicide, he challenged the idea that a person’s life can lose its value. He also distinguished between deliberately ending a life and accepting the limits of medical treatment when an intervention no longer offers proportionate benefit.

Throughout his talk, his message returned to accompaniment: listening carefully, recognising fears and loneliness, and offering practical, spiritual and personal support.

“Even when medicine cannot heal, it doesn’t mean medicine should not care,” he said.

For parish communities, this means ensuring that those who become housebound remain part of parish life, with relationships to sustain and gifts to contribute.

Bringing Holy Communion and providing access to the sacraments are essential, Fr Boquet said, but accompaniment also asks for time, friendship and physical presence. Responsibility for this care belongs to the whole community.

His examples of accompaniment brought the message close to home: listening to someone who feels alone, supporting a family through illness or holding a person’s hand as they approach death.

During questions, Fr Boquet encouraged people to seek guidance when facing difficult ethical decisions, recognising that individual circumstances can be complex.

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Dignity, faith and the gift of being present (By Kirsty Muir/Clearly/Catholic Diocese of Hamilton)