Dying Well: Medicine and Mortality through Jewish, Chris-tian, and Muslim Eyes
April 12, 2005

Made possible by grants from the Foundation for Spirituality and Medicine and the Maryland Council on the Humanities, through the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this conference do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Maryland Humanities Council.

On April 12th at the Conference Center at Shepphard Pratt 180 persons assembled for a meeting. That is not particularly newsworthy until you know who was there and why. Doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains, hospice staff and volun-teers, counselors, psychiatrists, and congregational clergy from the three Abrahamic faith traditions had gathered to address the topic Dying Well: Medicine and Mortality through Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Eyes.

When Chris Leighton asked me to put together a Planning Committee for this conference over a year ago, we did not know that by April 12th our topic would dominate the national news. The case of Terri Schiavo and the suffering of Pope John Paul II have brought end-of-life issues into the public eye as never before.

The ICJS, no stranger to grappling with difficult matters, drew on excellent resource persons for the conference. The keynote speaker was Dr. Richard Payne, Colliflower Director of the Institute on Care at the End of Life at Duke University, and former Chief of the Pain and Palliative Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Sister Sharon Burns, RSM, Chaplain, Stella Maris Hospice Unit and former Chaplain at Stella Maris Hospice; Rabbi Dayle Friedman, Director, Hiddur: The Center for Aging and Judaism; Imam Yahya Hendi, Muslim Chaplain, Georgetown University; and geriatric nurse Jane Marks comprised our interfaith panel.

Presenters included Dr. Rosann Catalano, ICJS Roman Catholic Scholar, and Rabbi Avram Reisner, Ph.D., Conservative Move-ment Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, who led a religious text study, My Soul Is Full of Troubles, from Psalm 88. Dr. John Payne, Medical Director at Joseph Richey Hospice and Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine introduced a medical case study, How to Decide When Nobody Can Agree. Dr. Clyde Shallenberger, Emeritus Director of the Chaplaincy Service and Emeritus Co-Director of the Ethics Committee and Consultation Service at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, concluded the full day by speaking on Implementing Change: Implications for Our Work.

We will follow the experience of April 12th with several colloquia for medical professionals and clergy, and with con-gregational conversations for congregants from synagogues, churches, and mosques around the topics and materials de-veloped for the conference. Finally, we will publish a study guide based on research and writing collected in these pro-grams. The study guide will be used in ongoing congregational study here and around the country.