At the Second Annual Thomistic Bioethics Colloquium, organized by Dominican Healthcare Ministry and held May 29 at St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village, Catholic scholars and clergy reflected on the Anointing of the Sick as a sacrament of grace, forgiveness, strength, and hope.

The gathering comes after New York State’s enacted the Medical Aid in Dying Act, with the law set to take effect in August. The issue has continued to draw Catholic concern, including in an article on June 2 by Archbishop Hicks in First Things.

Speakers offered the Church’s personalistic vision of sickness, suffering, and death, emphasizing that the sick are not useless, the dying are not a burden, and suffering is not without meaning.

Among those interviewed were Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P., S.T.D., Adam Cardinal Maida, professor of theology at Ave Maria University, and Fr. Hyacinth Grubb, O.P., executive director of Dominican Healthcare Ministry.

The colloquium explored the Anointing of the Sick in its pastoral, theological, and historical dimensions, drawing from Scripture, Church teaching, canon law, magisterial documents, and the Catholic tradition of care for the sick and dying.