[sarasmom]

I am certain someone will correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand the Texas law (as opposed to Florida law) futile medical care under hospital care decisions involve much more than merely deciding not to provide a terminal patient with basic nutrition/hydration and comfort measures, generally known as palliative care, during a natural death process.

I do not see how anyone can fault the Catholic Church, or Texas law, for their reasoned stance here.

Futile methods involving sustained extreme artificial medical interventions that needlessly prolongs death are wrong, if there is no rational medical basis to believe the extraordinary medical procedures performed, will produce any outcome other than prolonging the patients painfull death.

This stance should not be confused with medical institutions refusing to provide the most basic palliative care to a person who is dying from a medically incurable condition.

[kitkat]

I’ve been trying hard to figure out just what was left out of this article.

The Catholic teaching is that only God decides when someone dies naturally. That means that if a truly brain dead patient is on a machine to keep him alive, it’s OK to take him off the machine. He is dead. So why keep him breathing, etc.

However, the church is very much against killing anyone who is alive.

Plain and simple. Surely the writer has something wrong about the Bishop’s statement.