There is an excellent article in the Jan. 21-28 issue of America. The title: Church Teaching and My Father's Choice. The author: John J. Hardt, who is an assistant professor of bioethics at
the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at Loyola
University Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine. Alas, the article is available only for subscribers. But here are some passages that may encourage you to track down the whole piece:
'IF I'M EVER IN A SITUATION where I'm
permanently unconscious and unable to eat," says my father, "I'm
begging you: Let me go. I don't want to be kept alive by a feeding
tube." We are sitting at my parents' table on a pleasant Sunday
morning, with advance health care directives sharing space with coffee
cups and the newspaper.
I probe my
father's reasoning about such an important decision: "What if I think
you're able to recognize us, but you are unable to speak, communicate
or engage us? What about end-stage Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, where
you might stop eating on your own? You both know that doctors are
rather certain that patients in a persistent vegetative state don't
experience pain or discomfort, right?"
No response.
"What if I want to keep you alive in that condition?" I ask with a smile.
My
father responds with a chuckle. "If there were a decent chance that I'd
get better and everything else is working well, then I'd trust your
judgment," he tells me. "Otherwise, the answer is no. Let me go!"
"But why," I ask, "if you're unaware of your own condition?"
"Because
I know nam that I don't want to continue like that. What am I
continuing for? With whom could I communicate? Whom could I love? Would
I not have somewhere better to be, anyway?" My father's quip reflects
our shared faith in Christ's salvific death and resurrection. "Let me
go."
Real people bear both the grace and
the burden of thinking as the church does about the meaning of living
and dying. So it is with my still-living father's words in mind that I
think about a recent statement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith concerning the morality of removing artificial nutrition and
hydration from a patient who lives in a persistent vegetative state. I
have my parents' power of attorney for health care, a decision they
made prompted by the publicity surrounding the Terri Schiavo case. I
now have a more personal stake in a discussion that had already engaged
me professionally, as a Catholic bioethicist teaching in a Catholic
medical school. It is now my responsibility as a son who cherishes his
parents to help ensure that the manner of their dying as Catholics will
be consistent with the way they lived as Catholics.....
My father, in our conversation at the
kitchen table, for example, did not suggest any inclination to end his
life prematurely. He does not seek a false sense of control over his
dying that betrays the truth of our Christian narrative, namely, that
suffering is constitutive of who we are as brothers and sisters of
Christ and that the experience of dying, while possibly frightening and
lonely, is ultimately identified with Christ's dying and redeemed in
Christ's rising. But his judgment, informed by his faith, is that a
massive neurological injury that leaves him permanently unconscious,
unable to purposefully eat or swallow, would constitute in itself a
fatal pathology, one that carries no obligation to persist any longer
in that state.
When I consider my
father's questions-"What am I persisting for? With whom could I
communicate? Who could I love? Don't I have a better place to be?"-I
hear faithful echoes of our Catholic tradition. That tradition
consistently affirms that while biological life is an important value,
it is not an absolute good. How should my father judge a future burden
that is not his now and, were it ever to become his burden, he would
not be able to judge?
Perhaps it is in
the fourth exception noted by the C.D.F. that my father's thinking
finds its voice. While the other three exceptions offered by the
congregation focus on objective circumstances, this final exception
simply notes those "rare cases" where artificial nutrition and
hydration "may be excessively burdensome." This exception stands out
because it comes with no modification. It simply holds open a
possibility. While the C.D.F. does not offer any examples, it sounds to
me like the condition my father described over our kitchen table.
My
father's words tell me that he judged the maintenance of his baseline
biological existence as a P.V.S. patient to be an excessive burden. It
is a burden to him to know now that we, his family, would care for him
in this condition for a prolonged period of time. It is a burden to him
to know that he would be unable to engage in meaningful human activity.
And, finally, it is a burden to him to think that his death from a
devastating neurological injury was being held at bay by the insertion
of an unwanted and, in his judgment, invasive feeding tube. My father
believes that such a procedure would pose an unwanted and unnecessary
obstacle to his next life in heaven, the end of a journey he began at
birth, the fulfillment of a promise sealed in his baptism.
In
other words, my father has judged that the burden of persisting in a
vegetative state far outweighs the benefit of being sustained that way.
This is, in my view, a very Catholic way of thinking, shared by other
faithful Catholics, and consistent with Catholic tradition.
"Alfred Delp, S.J., was hanged for high treason in Berlin-Plotzensee at the age of 37" writes Andreas Batlogg in the current issue of America. He could have avoided death - which came on Feb. 2, 1945 near the end of WWII - if he had renounced his Jesuit vows. As the execution drew near he wrote: "The real reason for my conviction is that I am and have remained a Jesuit. ... The atmoshere is so full of hate and hostility. The basic thesis was: a Jesuit is a priori an enemy and opponent of the Reich."
On Christmas Eve of 1944, a little over a month before his execution, he scratched the following words on his prison cell wall: "Let us trust life, since we do not have to live it alone, for God lives it with us."
Let us pray for all who despair, thinking that they are alone in this life. Despite his life at the hands of the Nazi's, Delp longed to live. Three weeks before his death, he wrote a friend: "It has become an odd sort of life I am leading. It is so easy to get used to existence again that one has to keep reminding oneself that death is round the corner. Condemned to death. The thought refuses to penetrate; it almost needs force to drive it home. The thing that makes this kind of death so singular is that one feels so vibrantly alive with the will to live unbroken and every nerve tingling with life."
As the world mourns the death of a highly successful but seemingly lonely movie star, as our 24 hour news cycle continually covers the destructive patterns in the lives of celebrities who seemingly have it all, and as we witness the despair, loneliness, and destruction in our own lives or the lives of those around us, may we be given the peace and the grace to say: "Let us trust life, since we do not have to live it alone, for God lives it with us."
The story is here:
"With regard to the war and this issue, it's very much the same thing," Liz Hourican, a Code Pink activist told Cybercast News Service. "This is about basic human rights - standing here and being able to take care of women. Take care of women first. This is my body. I should have the decision over my body." . . .
Hourican further said that the war in Iraq needed to end before the issue of abortion should be tackled. "So if we are really thinking about 'thou shall not kill,' let's close down the war machine first," she said.
When asked if she would join the pro-life cause once the Iraq war was over, Hourican, however, said no. She told Cybercast News Service she would be willing to educate people and work with family planning groups that want to help women.
Code Pink was formed in 2001, during the days leading up to the war in Iraq. A statement on the group's Web site says its goals include ending the war in Iraq, stopping new wars, and promoting "life-affirming activities." The Code Pink women outside the Supreme Court were dressed in bright pink clothing and carried large signs bearing pro-abortion messages.
(Yes, I know that a great many people who oppose abortion strongly do not oppose killings in war and that, in some cases, such people do not even seem to mind killings that all of us here at MOJ would think are immoral.)
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
[This, from The Opinionator, New York Times online. As some of you know, I concur in Gore's position on this issue.]
January 23, 2008, 5:25 pm
By Tobin Harshaw
It’s
widely agreed that Al Gore, private citizen, has done more to move the
global political debate than Al Gore, elected official, ever did. Now
Gore, who as vice president supported the Defense of Marriage Act, has
put up a video on his Current TV Web site in which he stands up for gay marriage:
“Gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men
and women — to make contracts, to have hospital visiting rights, to
join together in marriage, and I don’t understand why it is considered
by some people to be a threat to heterosexual marriage…”
Gore’s statement, notes Ben Smith at Politico,
“pushes the Democratic establishment that much closer to a position he
now shares with Eliot Spitzer and some other leading Dems, and is
prompting a bit of grumbling in gay political circles that this batch
of candidates aren’t quite there.” He continues:
Gore’s words come after the leading presidential
candidates have tiptoed up to, but not crossed, the line of support for
same-sex marriage. All three support equal substantive rights for gay
and lesbians couples, and they’ve sought to woo gay voters in other
ways: Elizabeth Edwards has voiced her support for same-sex marriage,
for instance, and Barack Obama recently scolded the black church for
homophobia, in a speech to an African-American congregation.
Will Gore’s comments up the ante for the candidates if they want to be seen as sincere?
I am by no means an expert on this issue. There is a very good article on this question by my friend Bob Fastiggi entitled "Capital Punishment, the Magisterium, and Religious Assent." The article was published at 12 Josephinum Journal of Theology 192-213 (Summer/Fall 2005). In this article, he explains the three levels of Church teaching (as set forth in the Profession of Faith). First, are solemn, infallible teachings (e.g., divinity of Christ). Second, are issues definitively proposed by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals (e.g., illicitness of euthanasia, the reservation of priestly ordination to men). Issues in these first two categories are binding on Catholics. Third, are teachings of the Magisterium that have not been definitively proclaimed. Fastiggi places the teachings of JP II and the Catechism on the death penalty in this third category. These teachings are owed the religious submission of intellect and will (as set forth in Lumen Gentium 25).
Richard M.
