What's The Church's Position

[Byzantine]

on NDE's? Thanks!

[cappie]

How does the Catholic Church see NDEs? Is a near death experience a moment of grace? Dublin diocesan priest, Fr Enda Cunningham, who lectured in Eschatology (the study of the "last things") in Maynooth, now Pastor of St Mary's Saggart, Co Dublin answers that everything we may or may not experience can be a grace. Even sin may be an occasion of conversion. "In many cases a NDE has been a grace, because it removed the fear of death and made people think of our fundamental belief that 'life is changed not ended'."

He himself has known several people who have had NDEs, and for them it was a reaffirmation of the concept that this life ends in death, but life continues. It also made them live everyday as if it were their last. But he is at pains to stress that Catholic theology lays no particular emphasis on these experiences. "Sometimes there is an over-emphasis on the miraculous and this can lead to the manipulation of the vulnerable. The challenge of the Christian message is to find God in our daily life and the ordinary," he says.

Although the Church does not give great weight to NDEs, there must certainly be a lesson in what those who have experienced them recount, and in particular the message of universal love and forgiveness which pervades so many of them. Whether a natural phenomenon or not, a near death experience is a wake up call which underlines the mystery and fragility of life. As Fr Enda Cunningham says: "This is not a dress rehearsal. Life is unique and it will have a definite end. I suppose NDEs makes us ask the question 'What am I making of my life?'".