'Life Sustaining Treatment'

Discussions in Korea are gaining momentum to bring forward the timing for discontinuing life-sustaining treatment from the current “terminal phase” to the “end-stage,” under the banner of a “dignified death.” The church is concerned that this trend could lead to a weakening of protections for the lives of terminally ill patients. This was the report in the recent Catholic Times.

On June 5, the Ministry of Health and Welfare held a workshop for civilian members of the 7th National Bioethics Committee and presented the issue of expanding the timing for discontinuing life-sustaining treatment as a key agenda item. The intent is to allow the discontinuation of life-sustaining treatment—currently limited to patients in the terminal phase—to be applied to terminally ill patients as well. Previously, the Minister of Health and Welfare had also stated in media interviews that she would bring forward the issue of accelerating the timing for discontinuing life-sustaining treatment into public discourse.

Similar trends are emerging within the medical community and the National Assembly. On May 14, the Korean Academy of Medical Sciences and the Korea Medical and Bio Journalists Association held the 5th Media Forum on the Act on Decisions Regarding Life-Sustaining Treatment. At the forum, participants argued that the current restriction of life-sustaining treatment withdrawal to the terminal phase is causing confusion in clinical settings and that the system should be revised to allow such decisions to begin earlier. An amendment to allow the implementation of decisions to discontinue life-sustaining treatment for terminally ill patients is also pending in the National Assembly.

These developments have raised concerns within the Church. At a meeting held on May 30, the Bioethics Advisory Committee of the Archdiocese of Seoul addressed the proposal to expand the timing for implementing decisions to discontinue life-sustaining treatment to include the terminal stage as a key agenda item and highlighted the issues involved.

The Church’s objection is not to the discontinuation of life-sustaining treatment itself. The Church teaches that medical care which causes excessive suffering or burden to the patient, or which is disproportionate to the expected outcome, may be withheld or discontinued.

However, this does not imply recognition of an individual’s right to choose death. The Church believes that if the timing for discontinuing life-sustaining treatment is brought forward, even balanced medical care necessary to save the patient’s life could be discontinued. Furthermore, the Church cautions against the possibility that this trend could lead to the exercise of self-determination—such as the notion that “one can choose death”—and ultimately to discussions on assisted suicide.

Current law limits the scope of decisions to discontinue life-sustaining treatment to “patients in the terminal stage.” Since continuing active treatment for patients in the terminal stage is generally considered disproportionate care, significant ethical issues regarding the discontinuation of life-sustaining treatment have not been prominently highlighted until now.

A workshop for civilian members of the 7th National Bioethics Committee is being held on June 5. Courtesy of the Ministry of Health and Welfare

In contrast, the prognosis for terminally ill patients varies depending on their disease and condition, making it difficult to make medical judgments regarding the appropriateness of treatment. In particular, for non-cancerous diseases, there are cases where patients survive for several years even after a terminal diagnosis has been made, further increasing the uncertainty of such judgments. Furthermore, expanding the scope of application could place greater emphasis on the patient’s right to self-determination than on the medical judgment of healthcare professionals.

The director of the Catholic Institute of Bioethics) stated at a meeting of the Bioethics Advisory Committee, “Current law applies life-sustaining treatment to patients in the terminal stage and includes judgments regarding disproportionate treatment.” He added, “However, if the scope of application is expanded to include the terminal stage, would medical interventions such as mechanical ventilation—which merely prolong the process of dying without providing therapeutic benefit—truly be considered life-sustaining treatment?”

Birthrate In Korea

South Korea, currently riding high as a powerhouse in both industry and culture, has been ranking at the very bottom of the world in one particular area for decades. That area is the total fertility rate. In the Peace Column of the Catholic Peace Weekly, a reporter offers some insight into the present situation.

Whenever I look at statistics on the total fertility rate—which represents the average number of children a woman of childbearing age (15–49) is expected to have in her lifetime—I feel a twinge of guilt as a female citizen. Now that I’ve turned 50 this year and am finally exempt from the “duty” of childbirth, I feel incredibly relieved.

The low birthrate crisis is palpable even here in Seoul, where I live. As the school-age population shrinks, the elementary and middle schools near my home have closed one after another over the past three years. Every May, the annual “Blessing of the Unborn” ceremony at my parish—part of Life Sunday—is on the verge of being canceled due to a lack of participants.

Looking around me, the situation becomes even clearer. My longtime friends are prime examples of this low birthrate phenomenon. Of my five friends I’ve known for 20 years, four are married, but only one is a parent. That means the nine of us—including our husbands—have produced only two children. 

In a world where it’s hard enough to take care of ourselves, we couldn’t bring ourselves to be so reckless as to invite someone else into it, so marriage and childbirth were delayed. By the time we were finally ready, we were already on the express train to infertility.

At the newspaper where I worked for 25 years, women made up just over 30% of the total staff. Even though the percentage of women joining the company increased every year, the proportion of women on the payroll always hovered around 30%. This was because it was a recurring pattern: senior and junior colleagues at the peak of their careers would struggle to balance being “working moms” and would eventually leave the company.

There were a few rare senior colleagues who managed to juggle childcare, housework, and their jobs with seemingly superhuman ease. They were the type who literally worked themselves to the bone. Faced with the extreme choice between quitting or becoming a “superwoman,” my friends and I chose “not to choose.” We opted for a life of singlehood or childlessness.

Meanwhile, the “working moms”—the backbone of the total fertility rate—who were barely holding on became worn out. If they continued working, they were lectured that “a mother should raise her own child”; if they quit, people worried, “It’s a tight squeeze even with two incomes.” They said “giving birth is patriotic,” yet every extreme survival struggle afterward fell solely on the mother’s shoulders.

Despite the chronic low birth rate, which has led to theories of national extinction, the church’s stance is subtly different. Whenever I hear the “Universal Prayer for Couples Struggling with Infertility,” a corner of my heart feels uneasy. The problematic passage reads: “May they resist the temptation of unethical assisted reproductive technologies at the moment of choice and be guided toward the path of respecting life.”

The church prohibits any artificial intervention in the process of conception, including artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF). When I was first recommended IVF at a fertility clinic, I was more terrified by the daily injections into my abdomen, the egg retrieval and implantation procedures, and the terrible side effects caused by hormonal disruption than I was by the church’s ban on assisted reproductive technology.

Those who undergo IVF are brave women willing to endure risks and immense physical pain in their quest to become mothers. It is not a choice anyone would dare to make simply because they were pushed into it. Their journey toward life is marked by far too many tears.

As of last year, South Korea’s total fertility rate stands at 0.80. It has been below 1.0 for eight years now. With policy and social infrastructure designed to support work-life balance failing to function properly, who could feel at ease having a child? The total fertility rate can only rise again in a society where marriage and childbirth are not seen as challenges that jeopardize one’s career.

The Church must also show thoughtful consideration for those who earnestly desire to become mothers. We must comfort their hearts so they do not undergo fertility treatments with a fearful sense of guilt, and we must actively proclaim God’s mercy. For God, the Lord of life, will rejoice more than anyone else in a world where the laughter of children never ceases.

Place of Natural Law in Catholicism

Asking St. Thomas Aquinas About the Path to Happiness. The Foundation of Just Laws That Guarantee Human Happiness: Natural Law. This was the topic addressed by the professor of philosophy at the  Catholic University, reported in the Korean Catholic Times.

Only ‘Just Laws’ That Follow Natural Law Serve as the Foundation for Realizing True Good and Happiness

St. Thomas Aquinas viewed law as a protective barrier that enables humans to realize their rational nature and achieve happiness within the community.

However, he never agreed with the claim that “an unjust law is still a law,” a notion widely misinterpreted and disseminated based on Socrates’ words. Rather, he argued that an unjust law is “not a law but a corruption of the law” (I-II, 95, 2) or “violence” (96, 4). If a law does not aim for the common good but operates for the benefit of a specific group or the desires of those in power, it has lost its true nature. In such cases, it goes beyond a crisis of the rule of law to become a serious threat to human dignity. Therefore, the legitimacy of a law is not determined solely by form or procedure but by whether its content aligns with justice and the good.

In fact, throughout history, there have been many instances where rules took the form of law but destroyed human dignity. Laws that institutionalized racial discrimination, laws that deprived specific religious or ethnic groups of their rights, and emergency measures enacted to silence political opponents may all appear to be laws on the surface. However, by Thomas’s standards, they are not an order of reason aimed at the common good, but rather closer to the institutionalization of a distorted will of power. The racial laws of Nazi Germany and the apartheid legislation of South Africa are prime examples illustrating this point.

Particularly amid the crisis of positivism facing modern society, laws lacking a moral foundation do nothing but cause social chaos, let alone guide human conscience. To resolve the tension between the protective function of law and its potential for corruption, it is essential to clearly establish the criteria for a “just law.” This raises a fundamental question: What, exactly, makes a law just? Thomas’s answer is presented in terms of the relationship between natural law and eternal law.

Every just human legal system must be understood as part of the grand order of eternal law;  human law possesses the authority of true law only when it reflects the objective truth indicated by eternal law. 

The First Principle of Natural Law: “Do Good and Avoid Evil”

Thomas argues that just as the law of non-contradiction is the first principle of reason in the realm of speculative science, so too is there a first principle of ethics in the realm of morality: “Do good and pursue it, and avoid evil” (I-II, 94, 2). Thomas seeks the objective good presented in this seemingly simple principle within the concept of “natural law (lex naturalis).”

Crisis Of Human Freedom

The Ark's Window Column in the Korean Catholic Times, by the Director of the Jesuit Human Rights Solidarity Center, offers his reflections on the World We Are Building Now.

Rock musician and writer Nick Cave was shocked when he heard a “Nick Cave-style” song created by a fan using artificial intelligence (AI). It was so sophisticated that it was indistinguishable from his own music. But he soon realized something: the “river of life” that had flowed through his entire existence was missing from that song. On the surface, it seemed plausible, but inside, there was no lived time, no waiting, no loss, no breath. 

Cave says algorithms cannot create real songs. Songs come from “pain.” Pain refers to the complex, internal human struggle of creation. Algorithms do not feel, and data does not suffer. Writing a song is not about replication or hybrid imitation; rather, it is the exact opposite. Artistic creation and expression are possible only through humans. That is the structure of the soul.

The word “soul” sounds utterly foreign in today’s digital age. Only when we view humans not merely as biological entities but as “unique and irreplaceable personal beings” does that word resonate within us. 

In contrast, the countless data centers now blanketing the globe are like “ghosts within machines”—entities we have never seen before. They comb through someone’s entire world in response to a single simple question and deliver an answer in an instant. These ghosts tell us that our reality is ultimately nothing more than a matter of perception. Meanwhile, AI will always have further ground to cover, and its speed will only increase. It is not unique; not depth but a drifting surface. 

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, *Magnifica Humanitas*, is a profound reflection on what constitutes a “full and authentic life” for us in this era of AI, which is overwhelming the world. AI is not merely a technological shift but a “new reality” that compels us to reexamine the very essence of human existence. However, this encyclical is not a neutral reflection. Just as the technologies that create “new forms of assets”—such as algorithms, digital platforms, and data—do not embody a neutral worldview, the encyclical approaches the issue of AI through the lens of the Gospel.

Viewed through this lens, the ideologies revered in our time conceal countless false idols: complete autonomy, radical automation, the realization of artificial consciousness, and the overcoming of human limitations. Yet these illusions give rise to “new forms of dependence, exclusion, manipulation, and inequality,” transforming the way we perceive the human condition. Above all, behind the forces reshaping our labor, families, education, and politics lies a formidable “culture of power”. When power and technology combine to pursue profit alone, reducing humans to mere tools, this is not progress but a new form of domination.

The real issue in the AI era is not technological progress, but the crisis of human freedom. 

Viewed through this lens, the ideologies revered in our time conceal countless false idols: complete autonomy, radical automation, the realization of artificial consciousness, and the overcoming of human limitations. However, these illusions give rise to “new forms of dependence, exclusion, manipulation, and inequality,” transforming the way we view the human condition. Above all, behind the forces reshaping our labor, families, education, and politics lies a formidable “culture of power.” When power and technology combine to pursue profit alone, reducing humans to mere tools, this is not progress but a new form of domination.

The real problem of the AI era is not technological progress, but the crisis of human freedom. The power of data tames us into beings who are guided to be chosen, rather than beings who “choose.” Yet human freedom is not the “ability to do what one wants,” but the ability to shape oneself toward “truth and goodness.” Within this lies the truth of life: that we are beings with limitations and vulnerabilities. Through this, we learn compassion, generosity, and healthy interdependence. Through ways of life such as care, labor, nurturing, prayer, suffering, and friendship, we are gradually transformed into “knowledge and love” that resemble Christ.

Therefore, the most important question of our time is not “What is technically possible?” but “What makes us more human?” The age of AI is not a threat to humanity, but an opportunity to reaffirm just how “noble” we are. Rather than remaining passive, it has become an inescapable task of life for each of us to “fulfill our respective roles”. 

Choice for Life

The Bishops’ Conference Committee on Family and Life celebrated ‘Mass & March for Family and Life’ in Jeju City.The event was recorded in the Catholic Times.

Held under the theme: “Choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19), the event was attended by the Bishop of Jeju, chairman of the Family and Life Committee, along with committee members, priests in charge of family ministry from 10 dioceses nationwide, and volunteers from marriage mentoring programs, father and mother schools, and Teen Star.

That morning, approximately 500 participants gathered at the Lifelong Learning Center in Jeju City. Holding in both hands sports towels bearing the slogans “Respect for Life” and “Protection of the Unborn”. They marched approximately 4 kilometers to the Central Cathedral.

Members of the  Hallim Parish, Jeju Diocese, who participated alongside members of the parish mothers’ group, said: “Respecting the dignity of life is something so obvious, yet we often forget or overlook it in our daily lives.” She added, “I believe that only by participating directly and taking action like this can we ensure the preciousness of life is not forgotten.”

A  member of the Jeju Central Parish) said, “I’ve occasionally received education on respecting life at school, but this is the first time I’ve participated in an activity like this in person”, adding, “It was meaningful to see so many people join us—more than I expected.”  

After the march, participants celebrated Mass for the Family and Life together at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

The bishop who celebrated the Mass emphasized, “The family is not merely a living space but a place where life is born and grows; therefore, the choice to value life must begin in the family. We must deeply reflect on whether our families are places that give birth to hope or places that are weary and closed off. The theme verse for this year’s event, ‘Choose life’ (Deuteronomy 30:19), is not merely a slogan but a choice that determines the direction of our lives.”

Fruits of the Spirit

In the Korean Catholic Times, a professor emeritus of Scripture offers a meditation on Galatians 5, where the Apostle Paul lists examples of the works of the flesh (immorality). He then enumerates the nine fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  (Gal 5:22-23)                                                                                                                              The Apostle Paul lists as many as fifteen examples of the works of the flesh (immorality), including “sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, and idolatry”. He then enumerates the nine fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” 

Let us divide the immoral acts (vices) mentioned here into four categories. First, sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery cause our love to go astray. Second, idolatry and sorcery cause us to stray from the worship of God. Third, divisions and factions loosen the bonds of love and cause us to become separated from one another. Fourth, drunkenness and revelry disrupt social order and corrupt human nature.

Among the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit, love is the central concept underlying the eight virtues that follow. While the Greek text describing the “works of the flesh” is originally written in the plural as “the works of the flesh," the fruit of the Holy Spirit, “love (agape),” is written in the singular. This is because, although the fruits of the Spirit are diverse, they all ultimately spring from a single root: love.

If he were to name the two passages in the New Testament that most succinctly explain who God is, he would cite the following: “Jesus said, ‘God is Spirit’”. (John 4:24) The author of 1 John describes who He is in a single phrase: “God is love.” (1 John 4:16) Later, St. Augustine remarked in his commentary on 1 John: “Love, and do whatever you wish.”

In answer to the question, “Who is the mysterious God?” 1 John describes Him in a single word: “love (agape).” If the first commandment is to love God, the second is to love one’s neighbor. Therefore, the Apostle Paul says, “Love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10).

He finds that when his love for God and neighbor wanes, vitality diminishes and joy fades; conversely, when love fills his heart, he feels a surge of enthusiasm and joy. 

Last year, during the sweltering summer months of July and August, he spent time at a small farm in a mountain valley, tending crops and caring for chickens and two dogs. At first, the chickens kept a distance of about one to two meters, but after about three weeks, when he began bringing them their favorite foods—such as chicory, purslane, and lettuce—in addition to their regular feed, they came so close he could almost touch them. They would playfully peck at the back of his hand or his shoes with their beaks, as if treating him like a friend.

He was reminded of St. Francis. “When you give love, even plants and animals become friendly and repay you with joy and abundance.” At the same time, a psalm came to mind: “Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!” (Psalm 150:6)

He finishes the article with the last sentences of Psalm 85: Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet.

Righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,

and righteousness will look down from the sky.

The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.

Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.                                                       

Death Sentences and Executions

 

Executions in 2025 Reach Highest Level in Over 40 Years. This statement was made in an article in the Korean Peace Weekly, which reported on Amnesty International's 2025 report on death sentences and executions. 

At least 2,707 people were executed worldwide in 2025, marking the highest number in over 40 years. Executions took place last year in 17 countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia. This represents a 78% increase from the 1,518 executions in 2024 and is the highest number in 44 years, since 1981. Amnesty International noted that China, North Korea, and Vietnam did not disclose data. The organization stated, “We believe there were at least several thousand executions in China.”

In Iran, which recorded the highest number of executions, at least 2,159 were carried out. This accounts for nearly 80% of all executions and represents more than a twofold increase over 2024. The  Secretary General of Amnesty International explained, “The sharp rise in executions is due to a small number of closed societies carrying them out,” adding, “The Iranian authorities are weaponizing the death penalty to instill fear, suppress dissent, and control the population.” They were followed by Saudi Arabia (more than 356), Yemen (more than 51), the United States (47), and Egypt (23) 

Drug-related crimes were the primary basis for death sentences. Executions of drug offenders accounted for 46% of the total, or 1,257 cases. These were primarily carried out in Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. While the international community seeks to limit capital punishment to murder and serious crimes, there have been concerns that countries such as Algeria, Kuwait, and the Maldives are broadening the scope of capital punishment.

 Executions of juveniles under the age of 18 have also taken place, with at least three people killed in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, death row inmates with mental or intellectual disabilities are incarcerated in countries such as the United States and Japan, while in Iran and Saudi Arabia, there are death row inmates who confessed to their crimes under torture or due to illness.

The Catholic Church opposes the death penalty. In paragraph 269 of his encyclical *Fratelli Tutti*, Pope Francis stated, “Even a murderer does not lose his human dignity, and God himself promises to protect it,” adding that “a firm rejection of the death penalty demonstrates recognition of the inalienable dignity of every human being.” Pope John Paul II emphasized in paragraph 56 of *The Gospel of Life* that “it is clear that the death penalty should not be imposed on a criminal unless it is absolutely necessary—that is, unless there is no other way to protect society”.