Against ‘Natural Death’

A prayer of the faithful I often hear at Mass is for the protection of all human lives “from conception to natural death.” Hearing this makes me shiver in much the same way as would seeing someone pick up the ball and run with it during a game of soccer. It’s the “natural death” phrase that does it. Should I hear it to suggest that some deaths are just fine, and that we need no protection from those? That it’s only the unnatural ones that are a problem? That there are deaths proper to us, natural for us? The phrase is puzzling: It stands out as an intrusion not easily woven into the fabric of Catholic thought and practice. Worse: It’s an oxymoron. Death is exactly as natural to us as circularity is to squares.