The article describes attitudes towards death and funeral rites in contemporary Czech society. It begins by revealing the attitudes to death held by the majority of the Czech population - non-believers. The customary secular funeral ceremony, held in a crematorium, is not entirely well suited to meeting the needs of the bereaved, and this is borne out by the fact that about one-third of all cremations are held without a funeral ceremony. The author argues that the current situation is not solely the result of the economic situation of individuals but also stems from the deeply rooted attitudes and values and the approach to religion of the Czech population. The second part of the article is devoted to the attitudes towards death and the funeral rite preferences of believers, based on a survey conducted with members of three religious groups: Roman Catholics, Protestants (Church of the Czech Brethren), and Jehovah's Witnesses. Finally, the author compares the attitudes of the secular majority and believers, and also outlines the connections between conditions today and under the former communist regime regarding the general approach to death and funeral rites.
The present article presents the population of the parish of Stařeč at the very end of the Old Demographic Regime. The main part of the article is based on the analysis of the data obtained from the study of the registers of the births, deaths and marriages. The parish Stařeč was chosen as representing the territory where has so far not been realized a thourough study of the development of population in the nineteenth century. This part of the Bohemian - Moravian borderlands belonged to the mostly agricultural regions, at the same time, however, with successfully developing light industry. Its inhabitants lived exclusively in the villages and small towns and were predominantly of Czech nationality. The parish was large enough to render the demographical analysis of the data meaningful., Vendula Krausová., and Obsahuje bibliografii
Between the Baroque and Romanticism attitudes to death and the discursive framework of the emotional experience of dying fundamentally changed among the Catholic high nobility. The ideal baroque death was supposed to take the form of an extreme point at which the dying person confessed their sins through theatrical gestures and utterances. The deathbed ritual explicitly confirmed the denominational and spiritual orientation of the family. In succeeding generations, both aristocrats and commoners were expected to be confirmed in that orientation by a written and iconographic testimony rich in symbols. Romanticism, on the other hand, imbued the process of dying with sentiment, loving care and family cohesion, which among the high nobility brought solace and a peaceful death. Finally, between the Baroque and Romanticism the relative status of private and public experience of the last moments changed. The Baroque "theatrical" deathbed, which was presented with the central figure of the dying individual and the priest, was a public event. Gradually it changed into a more intimate, quiet contemplation with only a few witnesses gathered in the family circle. Moreover, the doctor came to replace the priest as the chief attendant at the dying person’s bedside. What remained unchanged was the anxious determination to conform to expected patterns of behaviour. By trying to fulfil the contemporary ideal of a "good death", the counts of Martinice and the princes of Schwarzenberg tried to affirm their unique position in Bohemian (and European) aristocratic society. Their emotional experience of death was intended to serve as an example to their descendants and form one of the constitutive elements of the family’s collective memory., Václav Grubhoffer, Josef Kadeřábek., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
The present article aims to answer the research question: How did the nuns perceive death, the dying and the deceased? The author presents partial results of her qualitative research realized among the nuns employed in one of the nursing homes as nurses. The article presents the perception of the dying persons from part of the nuns, as well as their professional approach to these persons. Further, the author presents the perception of the dead persons from part of the nuns, and records their specific ways of dealing with the bodies of the deceased. As for the results of the research, it can be stated that the nuns perceive dead as a mysterious event that constitutes part of their and our lives and represents a return to God; however, in spite of these mostly positive connotations dead is for them a disquieting event.
The article focuses on roadside memorials (RSMs) created for the victims of traffic accidents in the Czech Republic. It provides the results of longitudinal field research conducted in central and northern Bohemia in the periods 2005-2008 (first research wave) and 2011-2014 (second research wave). Attention is devoted particularly to the temporality of such memorials. The research, consisting of the study of a sample of 69 roadside memorials, was repeated after a period of around seven years and the data from both waves sebsequently compared; the final sample consisted of 89 memorials.
In this paper, I make the case for voluntary euthanasia of adults. My position is that this kind of euthanasia can be rationally justified. Firstly, I present an argument in favour of rationality of suicide and propose a set of general conditions for a rational suicide. Secondly, I argue that if suicide can be rational, then euthanasia can be rational. Then I anticipate counter-arguments against my position and suggest their refutations. I answer the following objections: that i) it is not possible to preferentially compare life and death and prefer the latter; that ii) it is not possible for life to not be worth living; and that iii) the judgement, that life is not worth living, is necessarily irrational. Concerning objection i) I show that it is possible to preferentially compare life and death and prefer the latter; concerning ii) I show that two possible justifications for this objection are untenable; and concerning iii) I show that three possible justifications for this objection are untenable. Finally, I conclude that euthanasia can be rational., V tomto článku obhajujem názor, že dobrovoľná eutanázia dospelých môže byť racionálna. Najprv ponúknem argument v prospech racionálnosti sebausmrtenia a následne navrhnem všeobecnú sadu podmienok pre racionálne sebausmrtenie. Potom argumentujem, že ak môže byť sebausmrtenie racionálne, tak aj eutanázia môže byť racionálna. Následne anticipujem námietky a reagujem na ne. Odpovedám na námietky, že i) nie je možné preferenčne porovnávať život a smrť a preferovať smrť; že ii) nie je možné, aby život nebol hoden žitia; a že ii) súd, že život nie je hoden žitia, je nevyhnutne iracionálny. Ohľadom námietky i) ukazujem, že je možné preferenčne porovnávať medzi životom a smrťou a preferovať smrť, ohľadom ii) ukazujem, že dva možné spôsoby zdôvodnenia tejto námietky nie sú udržateľné a ohľadom iii) ukazujem, že tri možné spôsoby zdôvodnenia tejto námietky nie sú udržateľné. Nakoniec uzatváram, že eutanázia môže byť racionálna., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
The article deals with the ideas of afterlife belonging to the individual eschatology of the Islamic tradition, the moment of death, the meaning and specific forms of ritual cleansing of a deceased Muslim. Furthermore, space is also given to the specific
significance of funeral prayers, the burial itself and rituals accompanying or immediately following the burial. Customs
and ceremonies pertaining to the moment of death and subsequent rituals associated with the burial are limited to the Sunni tradition of the Hanafi and Shafi’i rites of Muslims living in Syria and the Czech Republic.
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The subject of this study is the issue of sickness, death and dying as approached in the first textbooks of pastoral theology. In the Catholic confessional environment of late 18th century Central Europe, pastoral theology was a new discipline that was about to be introduced into university curricula. The aim of this article is to outline and describe the concept of sickness and death with which the first textbooks of the new discipline worked in formulating new content and forms of spiritual care for the sick and dying. These, presented as binding on future spiritual administrators, defined itself against the older tradition and drew inspiration from Jansenist-Enlightenment approaches and thought. We mainly analyse two or three textbooks that were widely used in the Czech environment. They relied on the prescribed and most successful textbook of the Viennese pastoralist Franz Giftschütz, translated into Czech by the Olomouc teacher Václav Stach, and on the Czech scripts of Aegidius (Jiljí) Chládek, a Premonstratensian of Strahov Monastery and Prague university professor. The changes in the content and forms of Catholic preparation for death and of the concepts of illness and death must be understood in the context of the reforms that affected the field of spiritual education at this time, the new view of the person of the Catholic clergyman, and also the changes in religious and moral sentiments and the promotion and dissemination of medical knowledge and concepts also in the non-medical strata of society.