Well-dying : 가톨릭적 죽음준비교육 연구 = A Study on the Catholic Death Preparation Education

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Death is a universal principle everyone should face to and we live with birth as well as death from the moment we are born. However, no one experience his or her own death during the life so people basically have death anxiety and just some different attitudes on death preparation and different levels of death anxiety according to their environment, experience, education, and/or religion and so on.
What is important is we can reach to our personal growth in the end of life depending on how to deal with our difficulties we experience in dying and death and it is ‘Death Preparation Education’ to helps achieve one’s personal development including one’s spiritual growth. Death preparation education is the holistic education to help people understand dying and death therefore accept their own death, furthermore, it support the bereaved people to look after their own loss and grief and empower themselves therefore live their meaningful lives more fully.
In recent years, the reality is that death preparation education is still unfamiliar in Korea, moreover in Korean churches although that has been practicing in many other countries. Education on death is education on life because they cannot be separated. In other words, preparation on death is preparation on life so if we people can realize the meaning of dying death we can move a step into more faithful life with the recognition on every meaning and decision about death and life is connected to each other. Indeed, we face to the calling of death preparation education in Korean Catholic.
The thesis is constructed with three chapters: 1. Understanding of death 2. Death Preparation Education and 3. Catholic Death Preparation Education. Chapter 1 looks at various perspectives to help understand ones’ dying and death including not only the dictionary definition but also medical, philosophical and psychological meaning of death. Also it shows Shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Christian views on death which have influenced on Korean perspectives on death. It can be seen that Korean have various perspectives on death, integrating aspects of Buddhism and Confucianism under the basis of Shamanism and there are more positives aspects by Christian despite Christian led to some kind of complexity to recognize the spirit/spiritual and eternal life.
Next is focused on the postmodernism which can give effect to people’s modern life and changes in their value, family structure, and cause of death, and the development of medical technology. Moreover, postmodernism resulted in the tendency to stick to only the present life but death and after life according to the materialism and ignorance of the traditional value and also the development of medical technology saw the death as a failure of treatment and the family breakdown by nucleri family led people to loose the chance of experience nce nlook at the process dying and death in the expanded family situation. In addition, people tend to deny the death as there reatment an increase in deaths from chronic disease. In a way, it can be said people deny the dying process rather thaanded famtself and todays, people may primarily rexp desuch accidental deaths or paindisedeaths by disease as they hear the term ‘death’. Like ncis, denial of death lerds to the stick to the present life. However, life with absence of understanding on death is not complete that life far away from death becomes impoverished and this is why many people want to know the meaning of death and feel the need of death education.
On the other hand, Chapter 2 illustrates how other countries educate and prepare to the death and compare with the situation in Korea which can explain the meaning and need of death preparation. Based on this, there is an effort to make the fundamental standards of death preparation in Catholic throughout seeing its various definitions. Death preparation education is defined as education including death, the process of dying, and all aspects of bereavement and offers the knowledge, skill as well as attitude about death and dying. It aims to help people understand one’s death more properly and see one’s life issues are directly linked to issues related to death and dying.
Western countries have already integrated the death preparation into the regular education and in Japan death education has been also spread out in Jesuit Fr. Alfons Deke’s effort. There is a commonality of being influenced by Christianity between countries in the development of death preparation education. It means today’s death preparation education is based on the Christian heritage of the meaning of death; therefore, it is obvious there is a calling of death preparation education in Korean Catholic. This chapter looks through some representative organization related to death education such as the Research Centre of Life and Death operated by Prof. Oh Jin Rock and the program on death preparation offered by ‘Community to think about life and death’ of Karkdang Welmmre Institute and compare values and characteristics between them. Prof. Oh provided university students Suicide Prevention Programs firstly in Korea and continues to support these programs and other educational programs related to death, proving the effectiveness of death education. And ‘Community to think about life and death’ has given its effort to expand the field of death education by recruiting professionals to execute death educational lessons, monitoring and managing them. As mentioned earlier, the background of death preparation education is the Christian culture and it requires reviewing the Catholic death preparation education in Korea.
Finally, Chapter 3 suggests educating death preparation specifically in Korean Catholic churches and for this, maps out its principle throughout searching the sense of Catholic believers. Following 4 statements are suggested as fundamental of Catholic death preparation education.
Primarily death preparation education should focus on reducing people’s death anxiety, helping them accept death is natural. It should address that death teaches us the meaning and value of life, reminding of death not as separated with the life but a life event to show the personal finitude.
Secondly, death should be regarded as humane, a completion and fruit of life. As reviewed in Chapter 2, death preparation education watches out not only matters related to death but also various life issues. Only human beings can recognize the meaning of death and complete and finish one’s life.
Thirdly, death preparation education should help people realize there is a spiritual aspect in dying. Although it is not possible to control one’s death perfectly because of the development of modern medical technology, we should not ignore the mystic and invisible aspect of death. However, unfortunately positive meaning of death as a part of field of life has been fade and ignored although it should be accepted as holistic including not only biological but also humane, social and spiritual aspects.
In last, it should be acknowledged that Christian’s death is participated in Jesus’s death. In other words, participating in Jess’s death means to accept death not as passive but active. We human beings recognize God more completely and experience Jesus Christ more deeply in dying and death. Indeed, death is a final highest decision. However, this decision is not made not at once after death and rather, we can reach this final decision as we make every decision at every moment of our life and review and synthesize each of decision. We live with Jesus’s death in everyday life and it requires faithfulness in our religious life.
In this line, death preparation educational programs for adolescents and elderly people are suggested. In fact, Korean death education is proceeding in the beginning, focusing more on old people in the end-of-life and in contrast, there are only few programs for adolescents so it implies that Korean Catholic Church should respond to the need of development of death education for youth people. Of course, educational programs Korean Catholic churches provide should include old people who are the large part of Catholic church community.
Each program for the adolescent and elderly is consists with 6 sessions for 2 hours once a week, aiming to introduce them what is the notion about death in Catholic church and the meaning of Jesus’s death, helping them hold the meaning of life and new hope. Both programs are organized in the regard of Bible and Catholic doctrine but carefully considering characteristics and needs of each group. Program for the adolescent focuses on the issue of suicide because the rate of their commitment to suicide has been increased, in other hand; education for the elderly primarily introduces them those practical matters like a funeral, making a written will and its effect.
However, these programs based on theoretical background and literature reviews because it has practical limitation as long as proved its effectiveness showing the change in their perspectives on death and their religious lives. This study has an implication that it tried to support Catholic death preparation education programs in the early stage of death education provision in Korea and it is expected to develop more various and specific Catholic education for death preparation throughout futer researches.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Abstract ⅰ
• 들어가는 말 1
• 1. 죽음의 이해 3
• 1.1 죽음에 대한 일반적 이해 3
• 1.1.1 죽음에 대한 사전적 정의 3
• 1.1.2 죽음에 대한 의학적 이해 4
• 1.1.3 죽음에 대한 철학적 이해 5
• 1.1.4 죽음에 대한 심리학적 이해 6
• 1.2 여러 종교에서 바라보는 죽음관 8
• 1.2.1 한국 전통 종교에서 바라보는 죽음 8
• 1.2.1.1 무속의 죽음관 9
• 1.2.1.2 불교의 죽음관 11
• 1.2.1.3 유교의 죽음관 15
• 1.2.2 그리스도교에서 바라보는 죽음 19
• 1.2.2.1 가톨릭의 죽음관 19
• 1.2.2.2 개신교의 죽음관 22
• 1.3 현대의 죽음관에 영향을 미치는 요소들 23
• 1.3.1 포스트모더니즘(Postmodernism)의 영향 23
• 1.3.2 현대 의학기술의 발전 24
• 1.3.3 가족 구조의 변화 25
• 1.3.4 사망원인의 변화 26
• 1.4 소결론 27
• 2. 죽음준비교육 29
• 2.1 죽음준비교육에 대한 정의 30
• 2.1.1 죽음준비교육의 개념 30
• 2.1.2 죽음준비교육의 필요성 30
• 2.1.3 죽음준비교육의 목적 32
• 2.2 죽음준비교육에 대한 사례들 33
• 2.2.1 외국의 사례 33
• 2.2.1.1 독일 34
• 2.2.1.2 미국 37
• 2.2.1.3 일본 38
• 2.2.1.4 그 외 다른 나라들 40
• 2.2.2 한국의 전반적 현황 41
• 2.3 한국의 죽음준비교육의 구체적 사례 41
• 2.3.1 오진탁 교수의 자살예방교육 42
• 2.3.2 평가 및 문제 제기 46
• 2.3.3 각당복지재단 “삶과 죽음을 생각하는 회” 46
• 2.3.4 평가 및 문제 제기 50
• 2.4 소결론 50
• 3. 가톨릭교회의 죽음준비교육 52
• 3.1 가톨릭교회의 죽음준비교육 프로그램 52
• 3.1.1 가톨릭교회 죽음준비교육의 필요성 52
• 3.1.2 가톨릭교회의 죽음준비교육에 관한 현재 상황 56
• 3.2 가톨릭교회 죽음준비교육 프로그램 실제 56
• 3.2.1 청소년의 죽음준비교육 57
• 3.2.2 노인들을 위한 죽음준비교육 65
• 3.2.3 문제점 및 과제 72
• 나가는 말 74
• 참 고 문 헌 77