03/21/2005: "Question of the Week: What does the Catholic Church teach about end of life issues?"

The short answer to this question is: a lot.

But with the story of Terri Schiavo, who is Catholic, taking up so much of the media attention I thought I'd answer a question about what the Catholic Church has to say about end of life issues.

There's a long-standing Internet belief in The Two things. As the story goes, someone once realized "For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important." See the above link for an amazing number of examples.

Here is my take on what The Two Things are for the Catholic perspective on end of life issues:
1. All life is valuable.
2. We need not fear death.

From the Catholic perspective, every human being is made in God's image and is inherently valuable. We are not to de-humanize anyone. People who are physically handicapped or mentally handicapped and just as much people as our most elevated athletes or experts. Similarly, the poor and the weak are just has valuable as the rich and powerful.

So we must charish life and everything we do must reflect that love for life.

However, that being said, as Catholic's we recognize that death is a part of life. In fact, for us to rise again in the company of God, we must first die. That is the pascal mystery: dying and rising to new life. We need not fear death, in fact, we must embrace this difficult part of life.

So when dealing with end of life issues, the issue comes down to satisfying both of The Two Things. While it may make "practical economic sense" to kill every infant born with a deformity that will ensure their burden on society is greater than their contribution to society, that clearly doesn't satisfy valuing all life. However, when an infant is born without sufficient lungs and there is no way to save them or help them live, it is not immoral to take them off the ventilator that will help them live for another few days and let them die. Said differently, we need not use every medically feasible option to try and prolong a life that is in the process of expiring.

This long-standing belief that the use of "extrodonary means" to keep someone alive is not morally necessary, recently was re-examined by our Pope, John Paul II in regards to feeding tubes. There were those who would call a feeding tube, "life support" and hence would deem its use as using "extrodinary means". The Pope clearly contradicted this belief saying that providing food and water is not "extrodinary" care. We have an obligation to try and provide food for everyone who is hungry and this obligation extends beyond those who can not afford food but to those who need physical help in receiving that food. A pretty obvious example of this would be a weak man or woman lying in a bed without the strength to use a spoon to eat from the bowl of soup in their lap. We have an obligation to help that person eat by spoon feeding them even though the could do it themselves.

Similarly, in cases like Terri Schaivo, where the person is in no way dying, we are obligated to feed them with a feeding tube and that this is not extrodinary care and as such is morally required.