Must We Feed Them?

Posted by Tom Hoopes

Saturday, June 13, 2009 9:45 AM

Terri Schiavo (wiki)

The Culture of Life Foundation has issued a reply (here) to the Consortium of Jesuit Bioethics Programs on the question of whether or not food and water are extraordinary care.

The question was key in the case of Terri Schiavo, who was starved to death by court order. The Jesuit Consortium published its critique of Pope John Paul II’s position in Commonweal.

Says the reply by by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D.:

“The Consortium states that directive 57 [of the U.S. bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs)] leaves to the patient the judgment whether means of life support should be considered extraordinary and disproportionate; the Pope’s teaching, however, by defining food and water as ordinary and proportionate care, takes the judgment out of the hands of the patient.

“The Consortium further claims (erroneously, as we’ve shown) that the directive identifies financial burden to the patient, family, or community as grounds for judging that a type of treatment is disproportionate while the papal teaching ‘seems to prohibit such considerations’ in regard to patients in a PVS (Commonweal, 14).

“These two observations lead the Consortium to level two questionable criticisms against the papal teaching: first, that the Pope’s views “represent a departure from long-standing Roman Catholic bioethical traditions” (p. 13); second, that the Pope’s teaching is out of touch with medical and legal realities of U.S. health care because it in¬sists that ‘society must allot sufficient resources for the care of this sort of frailty.’ The Consortium warns the bishops against ‘making hasty generalizations’ from the papal teaching in regard to patients in the vegetative state (p. 15). Let us consider the soundness of these two criticisms ...”

Read the whole thing. It is signed by:

E. Christian Brugger
Associate Professor of Moral Theology
Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary Denver, Colorado
Senior Fellow Culture of Life Foundation
Senior Fellow Westchester Institute
Thornwood, New York

Rev. Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.
Assistant Professor of Biology
Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island

Rev. Thomas Berg
Executive Director
Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person
Thornwood, New York

Joseph Boyle
Professor of Philosophy
The University of Toronto
Ontario

Rev. Basil Cole, O.P.
Moral, Spiritual, and Dogmatic Theology
Pontifical Faculty Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey

Germain Grisez
Flynn Professor of Moral Theology
Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary
Emmitsburg, Maryland

Rev. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Fordham University
New York, New York

Mark S. Latkovic
Professor of Moral Theology
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Detroit, Michigan

Patrick Lee
John N. and Jamie D. McAleer Professor of Bioethics
Director
Institute of Bioethics
Franciscan University of Steubenville
Steubenville, Ohio

William E. May
Emeritus Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
Senior Research Fellow of the Culture of Life Foundation
Washington, D.C.

Christopher Oleson
Senior Fellow
Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person
Thornwood, New York

Rev. Peter F. Ryan, S.J.
Professor of Moral Theology
Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary
Emmitsburg, Maryland

William L. Saunders Jr.
Senior Fellow in Bioethics and Human Rights Counsel
Family Research Council
Washington, D.C.

Christopher Tollefsen
Professor of Philosophy
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina

Filed under weekend commentary