ArticleThe Linacre quarterly2024
Catholic Teaching: A Middle Ground and Guide for End-of-Life Care and Decision-Making and an Antidote for Dying Badly in America.
Article in The Linacre quarterly, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Medical Aid in Dying: A Narrative Review of the Recent Academic Literature in the United States.Cureus · 2026Review
- Sketching the landscape: a scoping review of partnerships at the intersection of faith and health.BMC public health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Dying in the United States is characterized as: medicalized, depersonalized, high technology, fragmented with frequent transitions among care settings, burdensome to patients and families, driven by efficiency and effectiveness, and lacking in key areas, for example, access to palliative care and adequate pain and symptom treatment. Patients and families are often left with a choice of two extremes: vitalism or utilitarian pessimism (utilitarianism). The Catholic Church, however, rejects both of these extremes, and Catholic social teaching (CST) at end of life focuses on ordinary-extraordinary treatments/means, a culture of life and human dignity, accompaniment and community, and caring for whole persons through the end of life. The Catholic tradition of ordinary-extraordinary means is helpful to guide complex end-of-life decisions, regardless of one's religious beliefs, and offers a middle ground between vitalism and utilitarianism that can inform end-of-life care and decision-making for all patients in Catholic health care. While it does not provide answers, it offers guidance and enables conversations that are crucial for the dying and their families to make autonomous, informed decisions about end-of-life care. It provides an opportunity for the dying to let the care team, loved ones, and decision-makers know what a life with meaning, purpose, and passion is for them-and how they want to live and die. This article will summarize the problem, describe end-of-life Catholic teaching, and discuss how it offers a middle-ground. Arguments for and against vitalism and utilitarianism will be explored, including a discussion of CST's response to those receiving care in Catholic health care facilities who are outside the Catholic tradition and do not believe in the teaching. The last section describes a model of collaborative partnership where local parishes and Catholic health care come together to tackle the challenges of caring for and ministering to the seriously ill and those facing death.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.