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1. z
THE PARTICULAR
JUDGEMENT

2. z
Death
 the total cessation of life processes that
eventually occurs in all living
organisms. The state of human death
has always been obscured by mystery
and superstition, and its precise
definition remains controversial,
differing according to culture and legal
systems.

3. z
 Thanatology—the study of death—delves into
matters as diverse as the cultural
anthropology of the notion of soul,
the burial rites and practices of early
civilizations, the location of cemeteries in the
Middle Ages, and the conceptual difficulties
involved in defining death in an individual
whose brain is irreversibly dead but whose
respiration and heartbeat are kept going by
artificial means.

4. z
 The “point of no return”
 To claim that death is a process does not imply
that this process unfurls at an even rate, or that
within it there are not “points of no return.” The
challenge is to identify such points with greater
precision for various biological systems. At the
clinical level, the irreversible cessation
of circulation has for centuries been considered
a point of no return.

5. z
 It has provided (and still provides) a practical and
valid criterion of irreversible loss of function of the
organism as a whole. What is new is the dawning
awareness that circulatory arrest is a mechanism of
death and not in itself a philosophical concept of
death; that cessation of the heartbeat is only lethal if it
lasts long enough to cause critical centres in the brain
stem to die; and that this is so because the brain stem
is irreplaceable in a way the cardiac pump is not.
These are not so much new facts as new ways of
looking at old ones.

6. z
 Failure to establish beyond all doubt that the point of
no return had been reached has, throughout the ages,
had interesting effects on medical practice. The
Thracians, according to the ancient Greek
historian Herodotus, kept their dead for three days
before burial. The Romans kept
the corpse considerably longer; the Roman author
Servius, in his commentary on Virgil, records that “on
the eighth day they burned the body and on the ninth
put its ashes in the grave.”

7. z
The practice of cutting off a finger, to see whether the
stump bled, was often resorted to. Even the most
eminent proved liable to diagnostic error. The 16th-
century Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius, probably
the greatest anatomist of all time, professor of surgery in
Padua for three years and later physician to the Holy
Roman emperor Charles V, had to leave Spain in a hurry
in 1564. He was performing a postmortem when the
subject, a nobleman he had been attending, showed
signs of life.

8. z
 This was at the height of
the Spanish Inquisition and
Vesalius was pardoned only on the
condition that he undertake a
pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem.

9. z
Death as a final end and Judgement
 The current issues on the death penalty and
extrajudicial killings are not just socio-political issues;
they are radically moral and spiritual concerns. No
human law can justify or validate a violation of a divine
law. "Thou shall not kill" is a divine commandment that
does not only enjoin us to respect the sanctity of human
life, but, much more so, instructs us to recognize God
as the Author of life, and so He alone can take life.
Being judgmental and vindictive is ungodly.

10. z
 Killing can never be a deterrent to criminality. No
human authority or law can warrant death as a form
of justice. God is the Author and Lord of life. He
alone can take it. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay,
says the Lord" (Rom 12:19). When we pass judgment
on a person, we do not act righteously. We should
always be just and merciful.

11. z
 The Church condemns death penalty and killing
because only God can exact full justice, for He
alone can judge us. The divine judgment is meted
out at the death of the individual. This is called
particular or personal judgment. It is a Church's
doctrine which says that "immediately after death
the particular judgment takes place, in which, by
a divine sentence of judgment, the eternal fate of
the deceased person is decided" (Ott, 1974).

12. z
 The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:
"Each man receives his eternal retribution in his
immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in
a particular judgment that refers his life to
Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of
heaven-through a purification or immediately,-or
immediate and everlasting damnation" (CCC
1022).

13. z
 Law of Talion (lex Talionis) is part of the
Israelites' justice system that metes out a just
penalty for an evil action. The punishment must
correspond to the crime. In the book of Exodus it
is written: "If injury ensues shall give life for life,
eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot lo
foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for
stripe" (Ex 21:23-25).

14. z
 It was a prevailing law before the time of Jesus
Christ. It remains to this day profoundly instilled in
the mentality and attitude of the present generation. It
encourages getting even or exacting personal revenge
as a way of seeking justice. If someone punched you,
you could punch him or her back. If a classmate
bullied you, you could retaliate by doing the same
action.

15. z
 "An eye for an eye" mind-set is not Christian since it promotes
violence and shuts the door to mutual understanding and
reconciliation. Countering Talion's law, the Lord Jesus exhorted His
disciples in the Sermon on the Mount to love their enemies instead
(cf. Mt 5:43-48; Lk 6:27-36). He revealed what is in God's heart by
giving a "new" command to love because- "love covers a multitude
of sins" (1 Pt 4:8).
 The truth that God is a just and merciful judge is consoling to us. We
may suffer many forms of injustice in our lifetime, but it is God who
will ultimately render justice to us. All our efforts to be
understanding instead of being judgmental, to forgive and not to
condemn, and to "conquer evil with good" (Rom 12:21) will make
the divine judgment positive and favorable to us.

16. z
 The truth about particular judgment is implicit in our Catholic
practice of praying for the eternal repose of the soul of a beloved
dead, our faith tells us to ask our merciful Father to forgive the sins
of a departed loved one and to receive his or her soul into His
kingdom in heaven.
 The Church’s teaching on particular judgment is very clear. It
emphasizes that “every man receives his eternal recompense in his
immortal soul from the moment of his death in a particular judgment
by Christ, the judge of the living and the dead” (CCC 1051). This
instantaneous judgment upon death shows a soul where to go
immediately: either heaven- directly, or through purgatory- or hell.

17. z
 The Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church stresses that the
particular judgment will be irrevocable and final: “In dying every
man arrives at the moment of truth. Now it is no longer possible to
repress or conceal anything nothing more can be changed. God sees
us as we are. We come before His tribunal, where all is made right,
for if we are to be in God’s holy presence at all, we must be “right”
with Him- as God wanted us to be when He created us. Perhaps we
will still have to undergo a process of purification or maybe we will
be able to fall into God’s arms immediately. But perhaps we will be
so full of wickedness, hatred, and denial of everything that we will
turn our face away from love forever, away from God” (YouCat
157).

18. z
 Explaining about particular judgment, the Catechism for
Filipino Catholics clarifies: “This judgment of Christ is not
something merely imposed on us from the outside, as it
were. It means that by our free acts in life, we have become
open to Christ’s light and love-and are received by, with,
before the Father. Or we have freely made ourselves opaque
and impervious to His light, and have thus freely chosen to
harden our hearts to His love and let ourselves be
condemned to eternal punishment” (CFC 2067).

19. z
 The truth about particular judgment is implicit
in our Catholic practice of praying for the
eternal repose of the soul of a beloved dead, our
faith tells us to ask our merciful Father to
forgive the sins of a departed loved one and to
receive his or her soul into His kingdom in
heaven.

20. z
 Explaining about particular judgment, the Catechism
for Filipino Catholics clarifies: “This judgment of
Christ is not something merely imposed on us from
the outside, as it were. It means that by our free acts
in life, we have become open to Christ’s light and
love-and are received by, with, before the Father. Or
we have freely made ourselves opaque and
impervious to His light, and have thus freely chosen
to harden our hearts to His love and let ourselves be
condemned to eternal punishment” (CFC 2067).