Making medical decisions about our care or the care of a loved one, with fidelity to our Catholic faith, can be among the toughest decisions we’ll make in our lives. And as medical technology advances and the baby boom generation ages, the frequency of such decision is likely to increase.
Fortunately, the Catholic Church, through its bishops, provides the moral guidance we need to make medical treatment decisions in accord with our responsibility as Christians. For example, the Nebraska Catholic Conference, which represents the mutual interests of the Bishops of Nebraska, issued a document many years ago entitled “Medical-Treatment Decisionmaking: Moral Guidance and Considerations from Catholic Teaching.”
The document’s introduction presents the basic foundation for our moral obligation to be responsible stewards of our lives:
“The Catholic Church affirms the sanctity and dignity of every human life as a precious gift of a loving God. All men and women must respect the lives of others while accepting the duties of responsible stewardship for their own lives and for the lives in their care.
“At the same time, however, faith in the resurrection and hope for eternal life have enabled the Catholic tradition to accept death as the inevitable end to temporal life and to believe that death is the gateway to eternal life. It is for this reason that there is no obligation to utilize all possible medical interventions, all possible means of prolonging life. Death need not be avoided at all costs.
“Although Catholic teaching does not look upon biological life as an absolute value, nevertheless it rejects suicide, assisted suicide and mercy killing because they are intrinsically opposed to the reverence for life that Christians are called upon to manifest and express. Compassion and care for dying and seriously ill or disabled persons must never include the willingness to assist in the direct ending of their lives.”
In other words, by applying Catholic teaching on the meaning of life, suffering and death to the use of life-sustaining technology we can avoid two extremes: withholding or withdrawing technology with the intention of causing death on the one hand, and insisting on useless or disproportionately burdensome treatment to avoid death at all costs on the other hand.
Presumably, most decisions that individuals or families must make about whether to utilize or forego medical treatment fall somewhere between the extremes. Therefore, the document provides this basic moral principle to assist us in determining whether a medical intervention is morally required or morally optional:
“If a particular medical intervention is necessary or useful for the preservation of life or restoration of health, it is ethically ordinary and there is a moral obligation to use it. If, however, a particular medical intervention is analyzed and judged by the patient to be useless (offering no reasonable hope of benefit) or excessively burdensome, it is ethically extraordinary and therefore morally optional.”
A particularly vexing question that has garnered much attention since the tragic killing of Terri Schiavo is whether to provide artificially-administered nutrition and hydration (ANH) to patients in a so-called “persistent vegetative state”. The Church has a longstanding teaching, reflected in several documents, that nutrition and hydration should be provided as part of any patient’s normal care, even when the assistance of medical intervention is necessary. This obligation, however, does not apply if the provision of ANH is clinically useless or causes excessive burdens to the patient.
This teaching, specifically applied to persons in a so-called persistent vegetative state, was confirmed in a 2004 allocution by Pope John Paul II. In an address to participants at the International Congress on “Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State”, John Paul said that “the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act.”
As a result of John Paul’s allocution, last November the U.S. Bishops revised their document “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” to say this: “In principle, there is an obligation to provide patients with food and water, including medically assisted nutrition and hydration for those who cannot take food orally. This obligation extends to patients in…the ‘persistent vegetative state’” unless such provision becomes useless or “excessively burdensome for the patient”.
The Catholic Conference’s document is available online at www.nebcathcon.org. The document, along with sample healthcare power of attorney forms, can also be obtained from my office.
-
Youth Protection +
-
Evangelization & Catechesis +
-
Catholic Schools +
-
Youth Ministry +
-
Family Life & Discipleship +
-
News & Media +
-
Directory, Maps & Mass Times +
-
Diocese Home +
