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.
Habits are a peculiar component of culture, which currently have more functions in society. The function to identify is among the identification which classifies an individual as a member of “his/her” group, defines him or her and serves as an instrument for differentiation. The functions are an important element in the construction of a feeling of pride on the membership in a given group. The study submits a view of the specific realm of funeral habits and military funeral ceremonies within the military community with focus on the description of the current form of these habits in the environment of the Armed Forces of the Slovakian Republic. It introduces the basic formal means that are used in this environment in the case of a soldier´s death. The author observes how standards and rules are applied. She searches for an answer to the question whether there is a space in this strict environment hampered by norms to undertake spontaneous activities, not defined in the rules, related to funeral ceremonies and farewells, or other specific expressions that are part of life of this
socio-professional group. The study pays attention to specific types of ritual activities, such as ramp ceremony and welcome ceremony, the theme of soldiers - suicides, and the ratio of religious funeral ceremonies in the military environment.
Voluntary death, particularly when caused by oneself, defies easy understanding. The individual´s life carries immense value in the West and therefore a rather negative attitude toward death predominates. The attitudes towards death found in Confucianism, Buddhism and Shintó are substabtually different - the death of an individual is seen as a natural part of human life. The manner or style of leaving the world is, however, very important since it validates the life that preceded the event. This article focuses of the problem of voluntary death in Japan. It analyzes the Japanese expressions that specify various types of self-killing and deals with traditional religious and social factors that influence atttudes to self-sacrifice and suicide.