For most Australians this year, the first week of November will be dominated by the United States election and the Melbourne Cup. The Christians celebration of All Saints Day and All Souls Day will escape their notice. The history of the celebrations, however, raises pertinent questions about how death is seen in our culture and the implications for our society.
Death has always had a central place in Christian faith. At its heart is the killing and rising of Jesus. The paradox of life that comes out of a painful and shameful death was highlighted in the death of the early Christian martyrs. The dates of their death were celebrated as birthdays into eternal life. As well as remembering the feasts of the martyrs, Christians also followed a common Jewish practice of praying for their dead. The later institution of a three-day celebration of Halloween, All Saints Day and all Souls Day with their elaborated stories, practices and theology reflected a wider preoccupation in all societies with death in its personal and social dimensions.
In Christian monasteries particular days were set aside for remembering the dead. This practice spread through the leadership of Cluny in the eleventh century. At the same time a rationale for praying for the dead was also elaborated. It was founded on the evident wide range of virtue and piety in the lives of Christians. Although by God’s gift they may have been saved they also needed to be purified before entering the presence of God. The prayers of Christians could help them in this purification.
Purgation caught the Christian imagination. From being a spiritual process it came set in a time and place. Purgatory was imagined as a place of pain where a sentence for mediocrity was served. Prayer for the dead was also supercharged by the popularity of indulgences that could lessen the time spent in purgatory. The Christian imagination was also coloured by the stories and images of other religious cultures, many of which included belief in a periodical rent in the tissue that separated the spirits of the dead from the living. In these times the spirits of the dead could be set free. Such beliefs were enshrined in popular practice.
The three days of remembering the dead in November embodied these phases. The popular practices associated with Halloween reflected a pre-Christian world. All Saints Day celebrates those who have died and are now with God in heaven. All Souls Day remembers and prays for those who have died and are being purified.
The place of the dead in any culture is also elaborated through popular beliefs and practices. They reflect the natural human anxiety and curiosity about the end of personal life. They also reflect the attitudes to death within any society, and by implication the value that is given to human life. The respect given to the body of the dead in Christian ritual underlines the high value of all human beings, based on God’s love for them. In other cultures, even practices that seem to express rank selfishness may on closer examination include a concern for society. The Cambodian King, for example, who in order to guarantee his personal immortality bankrupted the nation by building the Angkor Wat, lived in a society where the safety and prosperity of the people was tied up with the life and fate of the King.
In Greek literature the connection and tension between the respect due to the dead and the welfare of society was embodied in the Iliad, where an enraged Achilles drags Hector’s body around the city. It is also made central in Sophocles’ play Antigone, which explores the tragic consequences for all concerned of Antigone’s decision to bury her brother in defiance of the King’s prohibition on the grounds of public order. As in the later play of the same name by Jean Anouilh written during the German occupation of France in 1944, the story of Antigone explores the limits of respect for the person and for society and the ways in which they are linked.
The complexity of this history and anthropology may lead us to reflect on our own society. I see three areas of possible concern about the way in which we are coming to imagine death, and about its impact on the value we put on persons and on their relationships to one another and to the world. They are the individualisation of death and of its rituals, its medicalisation, and its politicisation. In these areas there are grounds for satisfaction and for concern.
'At first sight it may seem to be a long haul from Purgatory to Gaza. But both illustrate the way in which our response to death has always been intimately bound to the value we put on life.'
The emphasis on the individual in our imagining death can be seen most clearly in the support for assisted dying as an expression of individual choice. It is also seen in the erosion of taboos against suicide. The latter is to be welcomed for countering the tyranny of silence which prevents both the persons who suicide and their relatives and friends from talking about their pain.
The emphasis on the individual is also seen in the fragmentation of ways of ritualising death. When we can no longer rely on shared rituals of grieving and burying our dead, we place a burden on individuals to find their own words and rituals at a time when they have few skills or resources.
The larger question posed by the weight put on individual choice is whether society will come to see the value of individuals to lie in what they make of themselves and not in their shared humanity. If so, not only the hedges that impose pain by limiting individual choice will be cut down, but also those which protect the life and possibilities of the powerless and despised.
The medicalisation of death is evident also in the growing acceptance of assisted dying. It reflects our vastly increased understanding of the causes of death and of ways to extend life. The greater trust and authority given to doctors has been accompanied by the humanising of the relationships between doctors, nurses and the people whom they serve. Respect for patients and their agency is given high priority in medical practice.
In some respects, then, the cultural authority given to medical science and its practitioners in matters of life and death has been beneficial. It also, however, raises questions. The doctors and medical scientists who are given authority to make decisions about whether patients should live or die on other than physiological grounds will also be influenced by cultural attitudes about the value of human life. In our society, they might value the worth of human beings only for their economic contribution to the community, intelligence, race and ability to live independently.
The politicisation of death has been evident most recently in the responses to the deaths in Israel and Gaza. Partisan support for one side or the other leads to the devaluation of the deaths and destruction of the human environment of civilians on the other side. The callousness about death leads inevitably to devaluing human lives more generally in social issues to do with migration, penal policy and race within the community.
At first sight it may seem to be a long haul from Purgatory to Gaza. But both illustrate the way in which our response to death has always been intimately bound to the value we put on life.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.