Posted on 03/31/2005 2:07:07 AM PST by bd476
PARIS (Reuters) - Pope John Paul, now being fed through a nasal tube because of his throat problems, effectively wrote his own "living will" last year in a speech declaring some life-extending treatments a moral duty for Roman Catholics.
The ailing Pontiff sharply narrowed Catholic guidelines for treating patients nearing death in March 2004 when he described tube-feeding as a normal treatment rather than an extraordinary measure that can be stopped if all hope of recovery fades.
This indicates he would want to be kept alive by artificial means even if he fell into a coma or a persistent vegetative state, such as the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo in the United States whose feeding tubes have been removed after 15 years.
"The Pope's statement would have to be considered the equivalent of his living will," said Father Thomas Reese S.J., editor of the Jesuit weekly America in New York. "It would be very difficult to unplug him if it came to that."
Increasingly popular in the United States, a living will is a written statement adults make to indicate whether they want doctors to use all means possible to keep them alive at life's end or to let them die if all hope of recovery seems lost.
As the Schiavo case shows, modern medicine can extend basic body functioning for years -- a worrying prospect for the world's largest church if that means its elected-for-life leader is incapacitated indefinitely.
The Catholic Church has traditionally taught that doctors and families could end artificial life-extending measures in good conscience if a dying patient's prospects seemed hopeless.
AGAINST "CULTURE OF DEATH"
John Paul, who has long railed against a "culture of death" he saw in abortion and artificial birth control, surprised moral theologians in a speech in March 2004 by insisting Catholics can no longer make such decisions even in extreme cases.
"The intrinsic value and the personal dignity of every human being does not change no matter what the concrete situation of his life," he told doctors and ethics experts attending a Rome conference about patients in a vegetative state.
"The administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act," he said. Denying them this treatment would amount to "euthanasia by omission."
"Considerations about the 'quality of life,' often actually dictated by psychological, social and economic pressures, cannot take precedence over general principles," he said. John Grabowski, associate professor of ethics at Catholic University of America in Washington, said the Pope had made his views clear but "left many theologians scratching their heads."
The problem was that he expressed this in a speech, not in a doctrinal document that made it official Church policy.
"The Pope can say any number of things but he has to tell the bishops' conferences when they have to change something," added Father James Keenan S.J., ethics professor at Boston College. "He hasn't done this."
As a result, he said, the U.S. bishops' conference and the Catholic Health Association have not renounced the more flexible earlier position even though many Catholic leaders support Schiavo's parents' demand to continue feeding her.
"We've spent centuries letting people figure out how they want to go to meet God, and now we have these fairly intrusive claims on a patient," Keenan said in his critical assessment of how the Pope was changing Church teaching on the end of life.
"It doesn't seem good for the Church to rethink how to die when the Pope himself is ailing," he said. "The dying of a Pope should not set our agenda."
I can't believe this. Talk about a completely misleading headline! Just looking at the headline I thought that the article was going to say how the Pope wanted to be "allowed to die". If you actually read it though it says the complete opposite. I wonder how many people will see the headline and not bother to read the article.
That's the whole point of their headline - lead people to the wrong conclusion. Sad, isn't it?
Reuter's Tom Heneghan is one vile Bastard. Jerk!
And I'm not even Catholic. Grrr.
And yet the MSM claims that they don't have a anti-religious, liberal agenda. Disgusting.
Fr. Reese sounds disappointed.
Good idea, Newzjunkey. The following statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoller during World War II comes to mind:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me
Martin Niemoller was a Protestant pastor and head of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church.
He was arrested for malicious attacks against the state, and spent seven years in Dachau and Sachsenhausen.
Pastor Niemoller was released in 1945 by the Allies.
Hmmm.
That never struck me at all. "Wants life support to the end" seems fairly clear cut to me.
Cheers.
Your dreams were stymied with every crash of the drop at the Nuremberg gallows, but evidently there's still hope, thanks to the very people who built those gallows.
Was the headline changed? The current one seems pretty clear to me.
I think some missed the word "the" in the headline.
"Pope's 'Living Will' Wants Life Support to the End"
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Roto Rooter at it again.
The Pope said that a feeding tube should be considered a normal treatment, not an extraordinary measure. He's absolutely right. Giving someone food and water is not life support, it is a necessity for everyone. But the headline of this article makes it look like the Pope is saying that providing food and water to the handicapped is somehow to be considered life support, when it is not.
Providing food and water via a feeding tube is considered life-support at least if the patient would not survive without it. Also, the headline wasn't referring to it anyway.
I just hope he stays out of Florida . . .
The writers don't always write the headlines.
And he got some of the traditional teachings wrong, too.
Yep, I missed that little word the first THREE TIMES I read the headline.
They found the one Catholic "ethicist" who has been pushing most heavily for Terri Schiavo's murder and quoted him extensively here. Wonder why?
Two pointss: the SCOTUS has declared mechanical feeding as extraordinary, and the medical community has declared PVS as terminal. Both of those are used in the US as justification for the actions against Terri Schiavo. Neither the Pope nor the Vatican are burdened by those American aberrations.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.