Canadian Bishop Clarifies Catholic Position on Nutrition and Hydration - Main issue in Schiavo Case

LifeSiteNews ^ | 4/20/07 | John-Henry Westen

[wagglebee]

LONDON, ON, April 20, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - London Ontario Bishop Ronald Fabbro has issued a statement clarifying the teaching of the Catholic Church on the provision of artificial nutrition and hydration. The issue has been contentious, even in Catholic hospitals, and was raised to international attention with the starvation death of Terri Schiavo in 2005.

"In an address which he delivered on March 20, 2004, Pope John Paul II referred to a particular medical condition called persistent 'vegetative' state (PVS), or post-coma unresponsiveness," said Bishop Fabbro. "In reference to this condition, the pope stated that artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) 'should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate and as such morally obligatory insofar as and until it is seen to have attained its proper finality.'"

Explained the Bishop, "In the case of a PVS patient, then, nutrition and hydration are required as basic care. A PVS patient is not terminally ill, and denying ANH would be an act of killing the patient by dehydration and starvation."

Commenting on the Bishop's statement, Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition told LifeSiteNews.com that his group "is pleased with the clarification by Bishop Fabbro on issues related to hydration and nutrition."

"The question is," said Schadenberg, "when will Catholic hospitals and Catholic physicians begin to follow their Church's official position on this question?" Schadenberg added, "The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition continues to be challenged not only by secular physicians but also Catholic physicians on the fact that we correctly recognize that euthanasia by omission does exist and in fact usually refers to euthanasia by dehydration. This is often called "slow euthanasia".

Bishop Fabbro also noted in his clarification that "It would be wrong, however, to conclude from the pope's speech that there is an absolute obligation to provide nutrition and hydration to all patients, regardless of their state."

"Providing nutrition and hydration is a general obligation," he said, "but Catholic teaching recognizes that there are circumstances where nutrition and hydration are no longer required and could, in fact, be harmful to the patient." The teaching, he said, is reflected in the ethics guidelines of the Catholic Health Association of Canada. "There are instances, for example, of terminally ill patients for whom death is imminent from an advanced progressive and progressing disease, where ANH is harmful to the patient and may be removed," said the Bishop. "In these cases, the cause of death is not the removal of nutrition and hydration but the disease."

Schadenberg concluded, "When a person, who was not otherwise dying, is intentionally dehydrated to death, this is euthanasia by omission. When a person who is dying and experiencing organ failure or other body 'shut-down' symptoms, that to remove all hydration and nutrition with the intention of preventing further pain and suffering is not euthanasia but rather accepting the limits of life."

[wagglebee]

For all of the death culters who will come in here and say, "it's been two years, quit talking about Terri Schiavo," I say this:

When the threat of you and your ilk murdering the innocent is totally eradicated, we will stop talking about it. Until then, WE WILL NOT BE SILENT.

[wagglebee]

Terri Ping

[wagglebee]

Catholic Ping

[wagglebee]

Moral Absolutes Ping!

Freepmail wagglebee or little jeremiah to subscribe or unsubscribe from the moral absolutes ping list.

FreeRepublic moral absolutes keyword search
[ Add keyword moral absolutes to flag FR articles to this ping list ]

[pillut48]

Agreed! Just wanted to correct a statement: "Schadenberg concluded, "When a person, who was not otherwise dying, is intentionally dehydrated to death, this is euthanasia by omission wanton murder." Enough with the pretty euphemisms. Call it what it is.

[jackibutterfly]

THANK YOU!!! That atrocity is something one should NEVER get over. I know I can’t.

[wagglebee]

I agree.

[Grizzled Bear]

When the threat of you and your ilk murdering the innocent is totally eradicated, we will stop talking about it. Until then, WE WILL NOT BE SILENT.

---

Rock on!

[metmom]

Preach it brother.

With holding food and water from someone who can sit up and swallow is certainly murder and inconscienable.

[kitkat]

***When the threat of you and your ilk murdering the innocent is totally eradicated, we will stop talking about it. Until then, WE WILL NOT BE SILENT.***

Amen, AMEN, wagglebee.

[Renatus]

Every time the subject concerning the murder of Terri Schiavo comes up I always post a notorized statement
which I had my doctor put in my medical records and which
I carry with me with my insurance papers. It reads: “In
case of my admission in a hospital or healthcare facility please contact a Roman Catholic priest. I want my nursing
care to include nutrition and hydration, however administered. Such care in the above mentioned facilities
should continue until no longer needed to sustain life.

I trust no one to make an end of life decision for me. Too many people, including those in my own family, have
embraced the culture of death when it comes to this issue.

[wagglebee]

My brother is an “elder law” attorney and my father-in-law is a totally pro-life physician whose medical specialty is such that nearly all of his patients are terminal. After consulting with them, my wife and I have signed extremely explicit advanced medical directives.

I feel very sorry for those who sign the “boilerplate” forms that are provided at nearly every hospital in the country, they are nothing more than thinly-disguised suicide requests.

[BykrBayb]

Excerpt from THE NAZI DOCTORS: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert J. Lifton:

Perhaps the most moving of all expressions of opposition in Nazi Germany involved three medical students and a few additional students from other faculties at the University of Munich, in the dramatic White Rose resistance group. Over several months during 1942 to 1943, the group issued bold leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime and its immoral behavior (“For Hitler and his followers there can be no punishment on this earth which will expiate their crimes”), and calling for the German people to overthrow the regime and restore their good name. The leaflets also declared: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will give you no rest.” The students were eventually discovered and condemned by a Nazi “people’s court”; most were beheaded. Significantly, one of the group’s leading figures, Hans Scholl, had been inspired by a sermon of Bishop Clemens von Galen of Münster, condemning the “euthanasia” program, and is said to have responded, “At last somebody has had the courage to speak out.”⁵⁹

59. Richard Hanser, A Noble Treason: Students Against Hitler (New York: Putnam, 1970), pp. 187, 22, 117, respectively.

[wagglebee]

Is this book still in print?

[BykrBayb]

Yes. You can read the whole book online.

THE NAZI DOCTORS: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide © ~ by Dr Robert Jay Lifton

[wagglebee]

Thank you very much!

[sarasmom]

I still encounter stupid people who, even when told the bare facts about Terri Schiavo, the money awarded in a lawsuit for her necessary care, that her life expectancy was medically judged to be twenty years at that point, the fact that she only ever came close to death when her “loving husband” was around, or whenever Greer got the urge to abuse the authority of the law, and order her to be forcibly starved and dehydrated...

Forget it?
Move on?
Forgive them?

No, I don’t think I will ever do any of the above.

[8mmMauser]

Pinged from Terri Dailies

8mm

[Coleus]

.

[Cicero]

She was murdered. By a corrupt judge and by her corrupt husband. That is something I can never forget.

I would add that it disappoints me that the Vatican has not removed her bishop for malfeasance.