Gulf Pine Catholic

6 Gulf Pine Catholic • July 19, 2024 My name is Deacon Justic Mitchell, and I am the Director of Marriage and Family Life for the Diocese of Biloxi. On March 12, my wife and I moved from Collierville, Tennessee, to Long Beach, to begin our journey to continue the work of Christ that He has chosen us to perform. Ultimately, we will live in Pass Christian once our home is built and I will be the Deacon at Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church. My mother was born and spent her youth in Pass Christian at our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church (then St. Philomena’s). All my life I was exposed to the glorious example of a strong married life that my parents shared for 63 years until the passing of my mother. I myself have been married for 44 years to my childhood sweetheart, formerly Beatrice Holmes. Marriage has been a pivotal sacrament in my life, as well as my family. However, at the current time, the institution is in crisis. As a Catholic Christian, there are some alarming statistics that we all should be aware of. In some of the largest statistics, compiled by Communio semi-annual magazine, which is designed to equip churches to save marriage and the family, it states: 1. 72% of all churches in America lack a substantive marriage ministry. 2. 74% of all churches have no ministry for newlyweds helping them through their first critical years of marriage. 3. 92% of all churches do not offer ministries that encourage healthy habits around dating or discerning the right spouse for marriage. 4. 85% of churches spend 0% of their budgets on marriage and relationship ministries. But, do not be disillusioned. The power of the Holy Spirit exists, to those of us who believe, in the strengthening of the family. These statistics are NOT those that comprise the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi, but are a warning sign of what could happen. And yes, there is hope. The FAMILY structure is the key to passing on the faith. This is why we need to rethink, on a parish-to-parish basis, what could be implemented throughout the Diocese that protects us from this type of familial erosion in the church. For example, according to the same information source, 78% of millennials from married homes are more likely to attend church than their peers from unmarried homes. The Catholic Church is an integral source of hope in the institution of marriage, but only if we act upon the interest of all components of family life. That is my mission as director and your mission as we walk hand-in-hand with the spirit of Our Lord and Savior, to rekindle the magnificence of marriage and family life. God Bless You, Deacon Justin Deacon Justin Mitchell is the Director of Marriage and Family Life for the Diocese of Biloxi. Marriage & Family Life Deacon Mitchell Marriage and Family Life Near-death experiences (NDEs) are a complex set of phenomena that often include reports of leav- ing one’s body, seeing it from outside or above, pass- ing through a tunnel of light, seeing various forms of illumination, experiencing the presence of deceased relatives and friends, and even sensing the presence of angelic or divine beings. Between 12 and 15 percent of resuscitated heart attack patients report NDEs. Sometimes discussions of these experiences in- clude spiritual interpretations and religious over- tones, and some commentators have claimed that “near-death experiences are certainly pronounced and conspicuous evidence of a transphysical soul” that we may use “to extract information about the af- terlife.” Such strong claims, however, require further substantiation, even as they trigger vigorous discus- sion. NDEs, to be clear, are not instances of a person actually dying and then returning from the dead to tell about it. If an individual were to die and return to life, there would have to be a supernatural explana- tion and cause. Human corpses do not come back to life, apart from the rare miraculous events surround- ing the deaths of Jesus, Lazarus, the daughter of Jai- rus, the son of the widow and Nain, as we see in the Gospels. Human death always involves the key notion of irreversibility, which is to say: the irreversible cessa- tion of circulatory and respiratory functions, or the irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, as explained in the 1981 Guidelines of the American Medical Associ- ation . NDEs involve situations that are reversible. They may be caused by physiological phenomena that arise as the human brain faces various stressors, like oxygen deprivation, rather than any properly supernatural phenomena. While supernatural forces could, in theory, cause an NDE, explanatory entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, as “Occam’s razor” counsels. The Church’s wisdom in evaluating such matters is that we should generally prefer a natural expla- nation for a phenomenon, unless and until the evidence for a su- pernatural explanation becomes truly compelling or overwhelming. Rather than presupposing a supernatural explana- tion for NDEs, scientists have considered alternative explanations by examining stressful, near-death situ- ations and their effects on brain function. A 2023 Scientific American article notes how re- searchers “analyzed EEG data from four comatose patients before and after their ventilators were re- moved. As the patients’ brains became deprived of oxygen, two showed an unexpected surge of gamma activity, a type of high-frequency wave linked to the formation of memory and the integration of infor- mation.” This raises the prospect that even in situations of severe hypoxia, certain brain functions may, at least briefly, operate in ways that could still affect thought and perception. Dr. Kevin Nelson, a researcher who has studied near-death experiences extensively, notes: “One of the most common causes of near-death experiences is fainting,” which is able to generate a sense of be- ing separated from your own body, or a feeling of euphoria. Researchers have also reported that a re- striction of oxygen flow to the eye can sometimes result in an experience of tunnel vision. Others have argued that central nervous system hallucinatory mechanisms may contribute to NDEs. The well-known neurologist, Dr. Oliver Sacks, notes how migraine headaches can generate illusions or hallucinations, which sufferers often describe as pul- sating lights, shimmering illumination, or fields of brightness. Sacks has also described the work of Swiss neu- roscientist Dr. Olaf Blanke who was able to gener- ate a hallucination, “a ‘shadow person’ in a patient by electrically stimulating her left temporoparietal junction. ‘When the woman was lying down,’ Sacks reported, ‘a mild stimulation of this area gave her the impression that someone was behind her; a stronger stimulation allowed her to define the [someone] as young but of indeterminate sex.’” NDE’s can also resemble drug-induced experi- ences, and many have noted the similarity of NDE accounts to essays written by conscious drug users about their experimentations and trips while using drugs like mushrooms, cannabis, LSD, ayahuasca, etc. Sacks also offers the important observation that the reason hallucinations seem so real is that “they deploy the very same systems in the brain that actu- al perceptions do.” When a person is hallucinating a face, the fusiform face area, normally used to per- ceive and identify faces in the surrounding environ- ment, is activated; when someone is hallucinating a voice, the auditory pathways are stimulated. It seems reasonable to believe that NDEs may rely on similar mechanisms. SEE MAKING SENSE OF BIOETHICS, PAGE 10 Making Sense of Bioethics Fr. Pacholczyk Contextualizing near-death experiences