The Art of Dying Well – Please can you help?
The launch of the Art of Dying Well website last year received a very positive response from the public and the media. It was described in the Guardian as “making a positive contribution to society’s communal wellbeing.” The campaign has really boosted awareness of issues around death and dying. Based in the Catholic tradition but open to all, it features real-life stories about dealing with the final journey. Professionals in palliative care, ethics, chaplaincy and history have informed the site content which is for the dying; the bereaved; carers (professional and otherwise) and, at a deeper level, it offers spiritual support for those who seek it.
Thank you to those of you who have already added a short piece about the Art of Dying Well to your parish/diocesan website. We need to keep up the momentum, so for those of you who haven’t had the chance to add a short piece about the Art of Dying Well to your site, with a link back to our website (the contextual link in this article on the Guardian site is a great example www.theguardian.com/world/20I6/nov/01/catholic-church-releases-art-of-dying-well), we would really appreciate your help with this.
Possible story for your website
As a Catholic approaches death, there are a series of comforting rites and rituals that can help a person spiritually prepare for the final journey.
These rites and special Prayers for the Dying are illustrated in the Catholic Art of Dying Well animation www.artofdyingwell.org which features the fictional story of the Ferguson family. It is narrated by the English actress Vanessa Redgrave.
Adding the www.artofdyingwell.org link will boost how the Art of Dying Welt website ranks in Google searches for terms related to death and dying, thereby helping people to easily find the site when they are searching for help with these issues.
The team behind the project has received lots of positive feedback since the launch at the end of 2016:
@acourseindying: “As my mother was Catholic, I arranged for a priest to come visit her and give her spiritual guidance. They prayed and she received the last sacrament, which is a final rite of passage in which a person receives forgiveness from God and which prepares them for their final journey. This ritual was brought back to my attention recently by a wonderful initiative of the Catholic Church “The Art of Dying Well.”
One visitor to the site said: “An excellent uplifting website which, hopefully, may help many to face the inevitable encounter with Sister Death.”
“Thank you for this wonderful resource. We will certainly direct people to it because caring for those who are ill is, thankfully, an increasing part of what we do.”
Allan Doyle, Funeral Director