Catholic Church issues decree ….
Catholic Church rules …
Catholic Church releases policy …
Rules, rules, and more rules. Such is the tone of the coverage of the Ordinary Minister of the Media on the CDF responses to questions from the USCCB on artificial nutrition and hydration for those in a ‘vegetative state.’ Like so many nameless bureaucrats locked in the basement of the Vatican issuing policies, commands, and decrees. The vestment clad functionaries are clearly out of touch with the needs of real people. The Vatican and the Catholic Church are all about rules anyway. Just one more rule to ignore, right?
Coverage and headlines such as these convey the sense that the Church is only about rules and not particularly concerned about the reality on the ground. But that is not the half of it. Worse is this quote from the Reuters report which is widely running that is wildly misleading if not a downright lie.
The Catholic Health Association called for careful study of the statement and advised member hospitals in the meantime to continue providing artificial nutrition and hydration only as long as the benefits outweighed the burdens involved.
The clear implication of this unattributed quote is that the CHA plans to completely ignore the CDF document. Responses calling for ‘careful study’ are just another way of saying ‘we plan to completely ignore you.’ However, I took the time to check the CHA website for their statement and it is unequivocally supportive of the CDF clarification. You be the judge:
The Catholic health ministry is grateful for the clarification provided today by the Holy See’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) concerning the provision of artificially administered nutrition and hydration to patients in a persistent vegetative state.
…The CDF document makes two important points. First, the provision of artificially administered nutrition and hydration to patients in a vegetative state is morally obligatory except when they cannot be assimilated by the patient’s body (and, hence, don’t achieve their purpose) or cause significant discomfort. Second, artificially administered nutrition and hydration cannot be discontinued for a patient in a persistent vegetative state even when physicians have determined with reasonable certainty that the patient will never recover consciousness. This is due to the fact that the person in a persistent vegetative state retains his or her fundamental human dignity and, therefore, must be provided ordinary and proportionate care which includes nutrition and hydration.
In addition to welcoming this reaffirmation of the value of each life, CHA is pleased to see the Catholic bishops of the United States affirm the wonderful witness to life by families, caregivers, and those who labor each day to make facilities for the care of these vulnerable patients possible.
The Reuters report clearly conveys the opposite view to the very clear statement of the CHA. Is this intentional misreporting? I do not know but I find the fact that the statement is completed unattributed rather telling. Either way, the tone of the article is deliberately downplaying any potential impact of the CDF statement by using terms like ‘Vatican Rules’ and by providing unattributed quotes that attempt to prove that even the Catholics are ignoring it. This only compounded by the fact that the quote is in direct contradiction of the official statement of the CHA.
Reuters should immediately amend the story and cease its agenda driven reporting.
September 16, 2007 at 2:58 pm
The Reuters report is (on this occasion, anyway) reasonably accurate. The CHA reaction to the Pope’s original allocution was mixed, some in the CHA preferring to interpret it one way, others another. (One of the CHA reactions can be seen here, and provides some information supporting Reuters’ account.)
September 16, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Paul is right the Reuters report on the CHA was in reaction to JP2 original teaching, not to the CDF’s clarification. Though they could have made this clearer.
September 16, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Thanks Paul and Jeff,
I can see now from the context that they are indeed referring to the earlier statement.
I guess, the questions still remains that since this story is about the clarification, should they have solicited a new response from the CHA.
September 16, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Paul’s link provided interesting insights. And John Paul seems to have done in this area what he did in the area of the death penalty. He seems to presume an ideal economic world in which cost is never an issue and one wonders if this tendency does not proceed from being in the medically secure situation that most Bishops and certainly a Pope is in but which is not the situation of many people in the world.
I doubt that Mother Teresa’s destitute dying were provided with artificial hydration and nutrition when they were not eating sufficiently in Calcutta …as the “natural” thing that John Paul stated in the 2004 address to be natural to the vegetative situation…
or am I imagining too much based on anecdotes that we have all read of her patients simply lying on mats on floors as they died with the nuns providing love and not medical expertise. For some countries and parts of countries, what John Paul required is simply fantasy..here to that point from the allocution…and try to picture any of this happening in the poor areas of the third world for those in a vegetative state:
“…society must allot sufficient resources for the care of this sort of frailty, by way of bringing about appropriate, concrete initiatives such as, for example, the creation of a network of awakening centres with specialized treatment and rehabilitation programmes; financial support and home assistance for families when patients are moved back home at the end of intensive rehabilitation programmes; the establishment of facilities which can accommodate those cases in which there is no family able to deal with the problem or to provide “breaks” for those families who are at risk of psychological and moral burn-out.
Proper care for these patients and their families should, moreover, include the presence and the witness of a medical doctor and an entire team, who are asked to help the family understand that they are there as allies who are in this struggle with them. The participation of volunteers represents a basic support to enable the family to break out of its isolation and to help it to realize that it is a precious and not a forsaken part of the social fabric.”
How relevant are such allocutions to countries who can’t even afford to have sufficient care for non vegetative patients.
Should moral theology for the world…require systems and number of employees educated in medicine that many economies simply don’t have and will not have unless they ignore educating their populations in the various areas needed to raise their economic level at all.
Is moral theology for the affluent and if so, what does Zimbabwe and Haiti and Bangladesh do with such addresses?