Category: Moral Theology

Since I am notified of all new comments to my posts, whether or not they are old, I’ve been following a discussion currently raging on my original post at JimmyAkin.org, About A Blogger… The originator of the discussion was horrified over a question-and-answer I did sometime back on the Catholic Answers Forums and that was published in one of Catholic Answers’ newsletters.

"Recently I received a Catholic news flyer in the mail, in which Michelle Arnold answered someones question regarding forgiving others who do not repent first for their sins. Michelles answer was very startling to say the least, and for which her reponse was… we are not obligated to forgive others who do not ask for forgiveness (paraphrasing here).

"Her teaching on this matter is extremely in conflict with what Christ Himself taught us to do. Christ taught us through His example and words. Christ forgave all those who were crucifying Him on the cross, despite the fact that the perpetrators were not asking for forgiveness while torturing Christ on the Cross. In fact, Christ said ‘forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.’ Christ also instituted the Lord’s Prayer for us to pray, and in it, it clearly states that we must forgive others who tresspass against us, and does not state to wait for their repentence first!"

Ordinarily, my practice has been to avoid commenting on very old posts so that old discussions will not be perpetually rehashed. But since this discussion is still going strong in the combox, I finally decided to comment.

First, a link to the original Q&A from which the published Q&A was drawn:

GET THE THREAD.

My answer in the thread:

"[T]here is no requirement for a human being to forgive someone who is unrepentant. Indeed, if the person disagrees with you that he has even sinned then announcing your forgiveness may prove counter-productive since it is likely to cause annoyance and resentment. All that is required is that you continue to hope for that person’s ultimate salvation.

"That said, sometimes those who have been deeply wronged find it personally healing to try to forgive that wrong, even though the person who wronged them may not want their forgiveness. If a person who has been wronged wishes to try to forgive the evil committed against him, that can be meritorious and may make it easier to offer that forgiveness to the wrongdoer should that person ever request it."

If you have ever had someone with whom you have had a disagreement approach you and say "I just want you to know I forgive you," then you’ll understand what I meant when I said that offering forgiveness to someone who hasn’t asked for it and may not be repentant "is likely to cause annoyance and resentment." In order for your forgiveness to matter to someone, that person has to believe that he has sinned and needs your forgiveness. If he feels that he is perfectly justified in his actions, he is not going to be grateful for your forgiveness and your presumptuous offer of it can actually cause further damage to the relationship.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t internally try to forgive someone a wrong you believe that has been done to you, which is why I said that some people find it personally healing to try to forgive great wrongs done to them. It just means that it may be better not to announce your forgiveness to that person until it is requested. If nothing else, your preemptive offer of forgiveness may short-circuit any promptings that person may feel to examine his conscience (e.g., "I don’t need to seek forgiveness; I’ve already been forgiven and didn’t even need to repent.")

The reader’s reference to Christ’s own actions on the cross is also problematic. Christ wasn’t just forgiving his executioners, he primarily was petitioning the Father for the forgiveness of all of mankind collectively. That he said so aloud was necessary for the unique action he was accomplishing and should not be indiscriminately modeled by those whose individual circumstances differ radically in nature from the universal redemption of mankind accomplished by Christ.

As a side note, this is why the WWJD slogan ("What Would Jesus Do?") sometimes annoys me. There are things that Jesus did that cannot and should not be modeled by Christians because what he did is unique to his being God. For example, it would be wrong to overturn tables and chase out the bingo players at your local parish on the premise that Jesus cleansed the temple of the moneychangers. In that case, trying to apply a WWJD template to the problem would give you exactly the wrong action to take in addressing the question of Wednesday-night bingo at Our Lady of the Gambling Den Parish Community.

For more information on the subject of forgiveness, see the article by Jimmy that I linked in the online Q&A.

THE LIMITS OF FORGIVENESS.

A reader writes:

I have been having a civil discussion about two married people and whether or not they should continue with the marital act after the women has had a hysterectomy for medical reasons.  The disagreement is based on the fact that two people should be married, only if they plan, or at least try to have children.

Okay, there is the first problematic premise. It is NOT true that people should only marry if they plan or hope to have children. The Church has NEVER taught this. It has always recognized that it is morally legitimate for infertile people to get married–whether they are infertile due to advanced age or something else. As long as they can perform the marital act, they can marry. Whether the marital act will be fertile or infertile in their case is another issue.

Although nothing is impossible with God, it seems inconceivable (sorry for that pun) that the women would get pregnant after a hysterectomy. 

True.

My point is, that even if this is true (getting married to only have children), when the couple was first married this was possible without Divine intervention.  What are your thoughts / understanding on this?

Whether you become infertile before or after you get married has nothing to do with whether you and your spouse can engage in the marital act. Sex is not just about procreation. You cannot intentionally thwart the procreative aspect of sex, but if it is infertile for other reasons then you can continue to have it.

In fact, it continues to be a debt that the two spouses owe to each other, whether they are fertile or not. If either of them reasonably requests it, the other party is morally obliged to pay the marriage debt in a reasonable manner and time.

If a woman has had to have a hysterectomy for medical reasons then that is not a contraceptive act because it is not done in order to bring about a contraceptive effect. The fact that she is now infertile is a side-effect of the procedure, not the reason it was done.

Even if she did have the procedure to prevent herself from having more children, that would be a sin that would require repentence and confession on her part, but it would not prevent her from having intercourse while in an infertile condition.

Bottom line: Being infertile–for whatever reason and whether it is culpable or inculpable infertility–does not prevent one from engaging in the marital act. Period.

Every sound Catholic moral theologian will tell you the same.

20

A reader writes:

My husband and I are young, both practicing, orthodox Catholics, with two children and one on the way.  We have been writing up our wills — no immediate reason other than preparedness, we are both healthy — and we now need to decide whom we should name as our children’s legal guardians in the event that both of us die or become incapacitated.  There are two obvious choices.

Option 1:  Mr. and Mrs. X. are our good friends, the same age as us and with three children .  Our families spend many hours per week together, and our children regard each others’ family as an extended family.  Our kids love them.  They share many of our values and our parenting style, plan a large family, and are even NFP users.  They, like us, are homeschoolers.  They are Christians.  They are, in short, perfect.  *But* — they are not Catholics.

Option 2:  My husband’s parents.  They love the kids and the kids love them.  They are practicing Catholics and in fact they are my older son’s godparents.  But they are also 60 years old — will be nearly eighty by the time our youngest turns 18 — and live hundreds of miles away.  We are concerned that if we should die suddenly, sending them to live with Grandma and Grandpa would be more stressful on them than for them to stay with their longtime friends, and also that the grandparents’ health will eventually fail.

Are we morally required to choose my husband’s parents over Mr. and Mrs. X for the sole reason that they are Catholic?  Assume that Mr. and Mrs. X would respect our wishes that our children at least receive education in the Faith and won’t stand in the way of their receiving the sacraments — but I’m pretty sure it would be unreasonable to expect them to take the children to Mass every Sunday, or to bar them from taking the children to their own church.

What expectations should we set, if we do choose them?  Is it sufficient for us to place enough resources at Mr. and Mrs. X’s disposal that the burden on them to raise children in two different faiths would be not so large?  I feel torn — my Catholicism tells me that to be certain they are raised securely in the faith is the most important thing, yet my motherhood feels they will be happier, healthier, and safer in our friends’ home.  Of course, it’s all theoretical — hopefully we won’t die suddenly — but if we do then this will turn out to have been the most important decision we ever make.

This is a tough situation. I’ll offer you what help I can, though.

The purpose of parenting is to prepare children for life–and not just this life, but for the next one as well. This is why parents have a responsibility to see to the religious education of their offspring.

Given the fact that what happens to us in the next life is infinitely more important than what happens to us in this one (given the fact that the next life is infinitely long and will either be really good or really bad), the proper religious education of offspring seems to have a transcendental value.

Since God mandates that all adhere to the Catholic faith for their salvation, it must be understood that–even though God allows others to be saved on certain conditions–that adherence to the Catholic faith must at least maximize one’s chances of salvation. (If it were easier to be saved as a non-Catholic than as a Catholic then God would have perversely commanded people to enter a suboptimal situation; one would then maximize one’s chances of salvation be entering a state that is out of conformity with God’s known will, which is crazy.)

In view of these considerations, it seems that parents have a responsibility of transcendental value to do what they can to encourage their children’s adherence to the Catholic faith.

This does not mean making them say Rosaries every waking minute of the day. That actually would harm their religious development. (More is not always better. We are expected to live in a human mode in this life, not a superhuman one.) But it does mean ensuring that they will be raised to believe in the Catholic faith and to participate in its rites according to their age and capacity.

This means, among other things, regularly attending Mass. Once they have hit age 7 (CIC, can. 11) they will be obliged to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation unless they have an excusing cause. Of course, if your guardians refuse to take you to Mass then that is an excusing cause, but the point is that the Church feels that it is very important to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation or it wouldn’t have gravely bound the faithful to do so.

It is scarcely consistent with the proper religious education of children to have them attend Mass only infrequently (this is not the way to raise them to be regular Mass-attenders as adults), and so it would seem that the parents’ responsibility to best prepare their children for the next life would strongly argue against putting children in a situation where their religious practice will be so neglected–at least as long as there is an alternative.

Since there is an alternative in this case, it seems to me that the thing to do would be to put in grandma and grandpa–at least as placeholders until such time as your friends become Catholic (it sounds like they’re already pretty Catholic friendly) or until you make other Catholic friends who would be willing to take them.

This arrangement may mean placing a higher good over a lower good (their eternal good over their temporal good), but it seems to best reflect the fundamental ordering of values in Christian morality.

Hope this helps!

A correspondent writes:

Have you ever heard that the Church teaches that ultra-sounds are immoral? My wife had one to determine the age of our new child and she was exorted by one of the gals at our parish that my wife should not be doing ultra-sounds and if she does one that would constitute active sin and lending herself to the "abortion culture in general."  In fact her and her husband were so upset by it that they called us yesterday and told us that if my wife chose to have the ultrasound that they would not longer be able to remain friends with us.

Unfortunately after the ultra-sound that my wife had we found out yesterday that she lost the baby. He or she was 8 weeks old.

First, let me say how sorry I am that the baby passed on. It is a human tragedy, and the Church knows the pain that you are feeling. To try to help those who have experienced miscarriage, the Church has a special blessing for those who have had a miscarriage. It’s in the Book of Blessings (every parish has one of those), and you and your wife may wish to have this blessing done. You can ask about having it done at your parish.

As regards to ultrasound, your friends are misinformed.

The Church most definitely does not teach that ultrasound is immoral or that it fosters the culture of death. To the contrary, the Church recognizes the moral legitimacy of pre-natal testing methods, even (in some cases) where there is no therapy available for a condition that the testing may reveal (see below).

The Church does have a problem with is prenatal testing that poses a disproportionate risk to the health of the mother or child, but ultrasound is a routine medical procedure that has been used for decades, and we would know it if it were fundamentally unsafe.

The Church also has a problem with using prenatal testing as a means of determining whether a child should be aborted, but that obviously is not what you and your wife were doing in this case.

Let me give you a couple of quotations from magisterial documents.

The first comes from a document that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued when Cardinal Ratzinger was its head. The document, Donum Vitae ("The Gift of Life"), states:

Is prenatal diagnosis morally licit? If prenatal diagnosis
respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human fetus and
is directed toward its safeguarding or healing as an individual, then
the answer is affirmative [sec. I, no. 2].

John Paul II also addressed the subject in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life"). Regarding prenatal diagnostic techniques, he wrote:

When they do not involve disproportionate risks for the child and the mother, and are meant to make possible early therapy or even to favor a serene and informed acceptance of the child not yet born, these techniques are morally licit (63).

You’ll note that he says they can be legitimate even just to "favor a
serene and informed acceptance of the child not yet born.” That means that you don’t even have to have a therapeutic goal for the procedure. As long as the procedure doesn’t pose disproportinoate risks to the child and as long as you aren’t going to abort, it can be used even if there is no therapeutic goal in view.

Notice something else, here: The parents’ ability to emotionally adjust to the child and his situation can be a valid motive for prenatal diagnostic techniques. John Paul II applied this to the case of parents facing the possibility of a child with an untreatable birth defect, so that they don’t have the emotional shock of learning about it only at birth but have some time to adjust emotionally.

It seems to me, however, that the principle can be applied in other situations. For example, many parents who see their child in 3D or 4D ultrasound have their emotional attachment to the child fostered. As long as the procedure is safe for the baby (and we have no reason to think this one isn’t after who knows how many tens or hundreds of millions of ultrasounds have been performed in the last thirty years) and the parents aren’t going to abort then it seems to me that the procedure is legitimate for those purposes.

Determining the age of the child is also a valid reason, since this can enable one to better plan the prenatal care of the child and to better plan for the birth.

(I recognize the importance of that in a special way because of my role at Catholic Answers. I oversee our speakers’ bureau, and whenever one of the speakers or one of the speaker’s wives gets pregnant we need to accomodate that in the calendar since speaking events are planned months in advance. Since speaking events won’t be able to be accepted for a certain period before and after birth, knowing when delivery is likely to occur enables us to plan things so that the speakers can have the time they need for the joyful event and parishes don’t have conferences cancelled on them at the last minute so that speakers can care for their family needs.)

In any event, the idea that the Church considers ultrasound immoral and a fostering of the culture of death is simply false.

God bless you, and I encourage readers to pray for you and for the baby, who is now in the merciful hands of God.

20

A reader writes:

My wife is pregnant with our eighth child.
Pregnancy has been and is increasingly getting quite complicated and painful.
When not pregnant, my wife has a uterine condition that is very painful.

What does the church teach about a hysterectomy in this situation?
Are there documents that the church has in this regard?

Perhaps you can understand the moral and ethical questions that we as faithful Catholics are facing. We are not in a huge hurry to make a decision on this. We are simply trying to talk to the right people and read the correct recourses / documents about this matter. We are not sure where to start. Can you help us with some direction and point us in a direction that will lead us toward Gods will?

I’ll do what I can.

First, let’s look at the potential motives for getting a hysterectomy. One possible motive is to avoid the increasingly difficult pregnancies that you wife has been experiencing. This is not a permissible motive for a hysterectomy because it relies on the contraceptive effect of the hysterectomy as a means to the end of avoiding a difficult pregnancy. While it is licit to wish to avoid difficult pregnancies, doing so in a contraceptive manner (a manner that relies on the contraceptive effect of a thing or procedure) is not licit. So you could not get a hysterectomy for that reason. You could, however, use Natural Family Planning for that reason.

But that’s not the only reason that there seems to be in this case. Your wife also has a painful uterine condition when she is not pregnant. That can be a valid motive for a hysterectomy.

The U.S. bishops’ document Ethical And Religious Directives For Catholic Health Care Services (which is approved by the full body of bishops, not just a committee) states:

53. Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available.

Whether your wife’s condition constitutes a valid reason in your particular case depends on how painful the condition is and whether there are better ways of treating it.

To explore that subject, you’ll need to talk both to doctors and–preferably–Catholic medical-moral experts.

In talking to doctors, be on your guard against possible contraceptive motives on the part of your doctor. Also, as with any major surgery, seek at least a second opinion, and be sure to ask about the downside of having the surgery as well as the downside of not having it.

If your doctor is older, try to find out if there are newer ways of treating the condition that he may not be aware of. (Also be aware that in former days doctors prescribed hysterectomies for all kinds of reasons that today would not be regarded as sufficient. This could also be a factor if your doctor is older.)

In talking to Catholic medical-moral experts, I would recommend the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

Ultimately, these things are judgment calls,  and your wife will be the one who needs to make the call. It is only she who knows what she is really experiencing as a result of her condition, and after she has all the relevant facts, her judgment in the matter should not be second guessed by others.

The thing to do in a situation like this is pray, research, make the best choice you can, and then leave it in God’s hands. God knows that we’re dealing with limited knowledge and must make the best decisions we can. Wrestling with that fact is part of the human condition, and the fact we wrestle with it brings glory to God.

God bless, and I hope this helps!

20

The same reader from earlier writes:

If I understand our Church’s teaching, it is wrong to purposefully
forego "reasonable" treatments such as medicines, food and water, and
defribbrilation.  In essence, a DNR (do not resuscitate) order is not
allowable for a Catholic hospital patient.  Is this understanding correct?

No. DNR orders can indeed be morally licit. The Church has not judged that defibrillation is required in all cases of heart failure. The Church hasn’t determined that defibrillation is morally obligatory at all, and there are certain situations in which it clearly is not morally required. For example: Suppose that someone’s heart is failing because there is a systemic problem in their body that simply restarting the heart will not fix–even if you bring them back with a defibrillator, you won’t have them back for very long (perhaps just minutes) and they may suffer horribly if you bring them back.

In such a circumstance, the costs of using defibrillation are not proportionate to the good to be achieved and it is permissible to simply accept the coming of death and refrain from resuscitation.

We also have to be careful about the other things you mention–food, water, and medicine. There are situations in which these also are disproportionate to the good that may be achieved through them. For example, if a person’s body has stopped maufacturing albumin then putting additional fluids into them will cause them to swell up until their skin literally tears open and their flesh weeps. This is not good of the person, and it reveals that there are circumstances in which more water will actually harm the person because of the way their body has broken down. The same is true, in other circumstances, of food and medicine.

That being said, as long as food, water, medicine, and anything else ARE proportionate to the good to be achieved then their use cannot be morally foregone as one has a duty to take reasonable (proportionate) means in caring for one’s life.

What about 100 years future, when a cheap medicine or procedure may
offer us unlimited natural life? 

It’d be really sweet! (Maybe.)

Would we be bound to forego the
treatment, welcoming our natural mortal ends? 

Not necessarily. As I discussed in an earlier post today, there is no such thing as true immortality this side of the Resurrection, only a prolongation of the human lifespan. That, in itself, is not a problem.

If so, is that any
different than a person rejecting medical treatments of today that did
not exist until recently?
 

This question has already been answered per se since one would not be required to refuse a dramatically life-extending treatment, but there’s an issue here that’s worth surfacing: Technological changes have indeed impacted what treatments one may reasonably refuse. The fact that so many conditions can be treated so much more easily today means that we are obliged to undertake many treatments now that we would not have been obliged to undertake in the past.

Until the 19th-20th centuries, medicine had only been slowly getting better (if that) for thousands of years. As a result, there was a kind of consensus among theologians about what one was and was not be required to do medically. This distinction was expressed in the ordinary/extraordinary distinction: One was obliged to undertake ordinary forms of care but not extraordinary ones.

The rapid change in medical technology–particularly in the last 40 years–has put huge pressure on this distinction, as it’s no longer obvious what’s "ordinary" vs. "extraordinary." As a result, the ordinary/extraordinary distinction has been giving way to a new one: proportionate vs. disproportionate. This is a much more useful way of getting at the underlying issue (does the treatment overall cause more harm than good to the patient when all factors–physical, mental, financial, etc.–are taken into account?). The new distinction has become sufficiently established in moral theology that Vatican documents have taken note of the shift and are starting to use the proportionate/disproportionate language, which has the advantage of not being easily undermined by future technological developments. As medicine progresses, more treatments will fall into the "proportionate" category.

Basically the question is this:  when does it [refusing a radical life-extension treatment] become "suicide?"  When
does it become "euthanasia?"

This is a good question. Refusing to take a life-extension treatment would, under the current calculus, be immoral if the treatment is proportional to the good to be achieved. This is something we just don’t know enough about right now.

What the good is in having a human live to 1,000 years old is
something that we just can’t say at this point. There may be unforeseen
costs in such a thing (like having incurable major depression set in as
soon as you hit 150, for instance). We’ll just have to get farther down
the road and remain attentive to the Magisterium before we can answer
this question.

Even before the development of radical life-extension technologies (if that ever happens) there’s going to be further doctrinal development in this area. The rapid aging of Europe will force that to the front of the theological burners at the Vatican. We’ve already seen some of this, and there will be more to come, possibly as soon as this papacy and, if not, definitely within the next two or three.

 

A reader writes:

I’ve been wondering:  100 years ago we didn’t have many of the
life-extending medicines and surgical techniques that we do today, that
allow us to extend our lives.  In the same manner, 100 years from now we
will (presumably) have many more extraordinary technologies that allow
us to treat and extend life spans.  Suppose there is one that even lets
us extend it so far that we will never have to worry about death from
natural causes – only worrying about, say, car crashes, or massive
physical damage.

I think that would be really cool!

In fact, there are folks who think that this is achievable. There are individuals who are talking about an expoential growth in medical technology in the next few decades (through things like the nanotechnology to repair all kinds of bodily problems that currently can’t be fixed) that may allow for the indefinite prolongation of the human lifespan–and with better health than the elderly currently enjoy.

In fact, there are folks (like Ray Kurtzweil) who think that, if we play our cards right in terms of what technologies we invest in now, that if you are able to survive the next 25 years then the technology will begin to come online that will let you extend your life indefinitely.

I’m all for that!

But this isn’t the same thing as true immortality. Even with an indefinite lifespan, you WILL eventually die (if Jesus doesn’t come back first so that you are one of those still living at the time of the Second Coming). Either a car will hit you or a disease will get you or a gun will shoot you or an asteroid will squash you or a supernova will fry you or SOMETHING.

There ain’t no such thing as true immortality this side of the Resurrection. Tain’t possible.

But if we can have dramatically longer lives than we do now, with improved health, that’s really cool. (Maybe.)

This is not to say that ALL such life-extension techniques would be legitimate. Some might involve unacceptabale forms of cloning or embryo manipulation, for example. Others might not really result in the survival of you. F’rinstance: Some are talking about jettisoning our bodies and uploading our minds to machines.

That’s not you.

If there’s an upload of you then the upload is no more you than Max Headroom is Edison Carter, as shown by the fact that both you and the upload can be around at the same time.

On the other hand, if you get rid of your body then YOU die and something else that thinks and remembers like you takes your place. It’s a technological Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The impact of indefinitely long lifespans on society would also be enormous, and not all of the effects would be good. Studies have been done about that, too. I’ve seen scenarios suggesting the likely effects on society of an "immortality pill" at various numbers of years after the introduction of the pill. It’s all just speculation, though. Whether the good effects outweigh the bad effects is something that we’d have to figure out with time.

And we might conclude in the end that humans just aren’t meant to live indefinitely–that there are design features in the human critter that makes it unsuitable for such long term survival. There are all kinds of dystopian nightmares here, but we simply don’t know enough in this area to write off the entire project without getting more data about the effects of enhanced lifespans.

Thus if someone offered me today an otherwise moral medical procedure that would dramatically extend my life, I’d be very interested in it.

I’m just speaking for myself, of course.

And the question has yet to be asked of what God would think of all this. Because of the Fall, we all die, and no futuristic medical technology is going to change that. The question is: Does God mind us extending our lives?

The prima facie answer is no, he doesn’t. Scripture contains praise for the physician, whose function is to extend lives (read Sirach 38). Further, God gave us the gift of reason to figure out the world, and it gives him glory when we do that in a way that doesn’t violate moral law.

There doesn’t seem to be any barrier that we can discern from revelation where God says "Thus far shalt thou live, and no farther." We may be able to figure out such a line through reason, but revelation doesn’t give it to us.

Some have thought that 120 years is the max cap that God wants on our lives, based on Genesis 6:3 ("My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years") but this most likely refers to something else–to the amount of time God was giving man before the Flood.

This is evident from the fact that if you watch the lifespans in Genesis they don’t suddenly snap down to 120 after God makes this announcement. Noah, for example, lived for 350 years after the Flood, for a total of 950. Nor do the people born after the Flood have 120 year life spans. Noah’s grandson Arphachshad–who was born AFTER the Flood–lived to be 438.

The lifespans do drop off, but they don’t level out at 120, they drop right through that level. So Genesis 6:3 does not seem to mean that the max cap on the human lifespan will be 120. It more likely means that God determined 120 years before the Flood that the Flood would happen and determined to get Noah working on Project Ark.

Further, if one takes these early chapters of Genesis and the numbers in them literally then it would count as evidence that–at least in some circumstances–God does not mind humans having close-to-a-thousand-year lifespans.

A reader writes:

My husband (who is a fundamentalist) came home from work the other day and proclaimed that his "co-worker"  is going to "bless us with a bunch of money".   Right off the bat, I had a problem with that phrase.  "bless us with money?!

Here’s the story on the "blessing"–

This woman has an illness of the brain, and requires expensive surgeries, and medicine daily. She sued the Dr. for millions. She says she  prayed about what to do with these millions, and she said that she wanted to bless her friends –one of them being my husband–with this money.  They want to pay off all debt we owe on our house, they want to buy us both new vehicles, build us a new house, and whatever else we may need.  I feel that this money should be used for her health problems, and the money that she has been "blessed with" that she has left over should be given to her favorite charity or her church. 

I told my husband that they were not going to "bless me" with their  money.  I don’t want it, and money is not a blessing to me.   

Since he is a fundmentalist, I need to give him a reason from the Bible why I don’t want to take their "blessing of money".

Can other people give "blessings" such as this??  I just find it absurd to put the 2 words in the same phrase–"money" and "blessing" (from a lawsuit)……..hmmmmm.

I’m afraid that I don’t have a Bible verse sprining to mind at the moment, but I’ll give you what help I can.

I think that there are two issues here. The first is the issue you
raise with the phrase about blessing people with money. The second is
whether you should actually take the money.

It seems to me that the first issue is something about which one does
not need to scruple. Although the word "blessing" frequently has
religious overtones, it can also simply mean doing something good for
someone. In this case it seems likely that the woman feels that God
has blessed her (done a good thing for her) and that she wishes to
share this blessing with others (by doing a good thing for them). This
is a natural and, in itself, a healthy impulse. If, for example, we
feel that God has given us a good thing (knowledge of the true faith,
for instance) and we want to share it with others then that is good.

Having money is a good thing, after all, and wanting to share that with others is also a good thing. We call it generosity.

I don’t think that the woman is likely to mean that she is bestowing
God’s blessings on us in the capacity that a priest of the Catholic
Church would. That is a different matter. It seems more likely to me
that she just wants to share what God has brought into her life so
that it can benefit others.

(There is the question about how she got the money, but that’s a whole other subject that is her business and that we need not address here since I have no facts about the case and cannot make any determination one way or another.)

I therefore wouldn’t scruple about the blessing language she’s using
to articulate this desire.

That is an entirely separate question about whether you should accept
the money or other goods bought with it.

If it is true that the woman needs the money to take care of her own
medical needs then that it what the money should really be spent on.
She should not reduce her supply of money to the point that she can no
longer care for her medical needs.

That being said, it’s her money, and she can spend it as she chooses,
though you and your husband do not have to accept it if you feel that
she is spending it unwisely and should be kept for her own future
medical needs.

It is also possible that the amount of money that she now has is in
excess of what she will realistically need for medical purposes. In
that case, it is still her money and she can spend it as she chooses.
If she wants to give some to her church or a charity, that is her
choice. If she wants to give some to friends, that is also her choice,
as it is the choice of the friends whether they wish to accept it.

Here we come to a very significant point: Even if someone did not need
the money–or a certain part of the money–for medical purposes that
does not mean that it is at all wise to simply give it to friends.

Money has a way of warping and poisoning friendships–especially large
sums of money.

Friendship presupposes a kind of mutuality, where both friends make
equal contributions to the friendship. As long as things are kept on
that basis, the friendship does well. For example, "You picked up the
check at the restaurant last time, so I’ll get it this time," "You
paid to travel out here and visit me, so I’ll pay your daily expenses
while you’re here." As long as friends are making comparable
contributions (financial, emotional, etc.) to the relationship then it
does well.

But when one partner makes contributions that are dramatically less
than the other then the mutuality that is the basis of the friendship
is destroyed. This can occur, for example, when one friend make no
effort to "keep up his end" of the friendship emotionally (e.g., never
being the one to pick up the phone and say "hi"). It also can occur
when one friend makes a large monetary gift to the other friend, who
has no ability or foreseeable ability to reciprocate in kind.

It’s not the same as giving a friend a short-term loan to help out in
a tight spot (though even that is quite risky and usually
ill-advised). Nor is it the same as buying something from a friend (in
that case you have received something of comparable worth). Nor is it
the same as leaving money to a friend in your will (in which case you
obviously expect to receive no compensation or consideration for the
gift).

Instead, giving a large gift of money (or a very expensive item) to a
friend will unbalance the mutuality of the friendship.

This will make the recipient of the gift feel the need to make even
greater contributions to the friendship in order to re-balance the
situation. (E.g., So-and-so gave me a house, so I really need to do
things to make him happy since I can’t repay him in money.) The
recipient will feel a need to go out of his way to please, or avoid
displeasing, his benefactor. And in time these greater efforts that the recipient feels driven to make–which are really attempts to re-balance the relationship through non-monetary contributions–will begin
to wear on him.

He will find himself enjoying the benefactor’s
presence less and less and may even start avoiding him just to avoid
the feeling that he needs to go out of his way to please this person.

All the way through this he is also likely to feel fear that he will
displease the benefactor, and the fear will also harm the friendship. We’re not afraid of our friends.

In a parallel fashion, even though the benefactor began with the best
of intentions, he will begin to feel the new sense of obligation, too.
He will also feel that the mutuality of the friendship has been
unbalanced and that the recipient should do things to re-balance it.
For example: "Look at what we’ve done for them. Why don’t they invite
us over more?" or "How could they go and sell that car we bought
them?" or "Why are they letting that house we bought for them get
messy and run-down?"

Since the two parties can no longer look at each other the same way,
the situation may become tense enough that eventually they start
resenting and avoiding each other and the friendship is over and the two parties think of each other only with pain or regret.

For all of these reasons, the best way to promote a friendship is to
keep it mutual, with both parties making comparable contributions, and the
best way to kill a friendship is to have one party start making
contributions that are vastly disproportionate to the other’s.

The situation is even worse when one party wants to make a large
contribution to the other put also wants to put strings on it (e.g.,
we want to give you a bunch of money but then tell you how to spend
it). When a gift is given between friends–or between anybody–it has
to be without strings. You have to let go of the gift that you are
giving, because if you attach strings to it then those strings will
end up choking the friendship. They will grate on the recipient and
lead to eventual disappointment on the part of the giver.

It therefore seems to me that if this person is a friend of yours, you
would be very well advised not to accept major gifts of money or
expensive goods from them.

There is even a danger here of being
propelled into a lifestyle that you would be unable to afford in the
long-term. (E.g., paying the taxes or upkeep on these things, or relaxing your financial discipline in the wake of a huge wealth in-flow and winding up with crushing debts, or feeling that you’ve got to go out and buy all new and better stuff to decorate the new and better house.)

If your friend really wanted to bless people financially then it seems
to me that the way to do it would be to wait until she has passed on–when
all her medical bills are paid–and then leave whatever money is left
over to friends, relatives, churches, and charities in her will.

You may not or may not be able to express that to her tactfully, but
there is certainly language that can be used to turn down a gift that
is too generous–e.g., "That’s *too* generous! We *really* appreciate
it, but we couldn’t accept that."

Hope this helps!