ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A day after the bishop of St. Petersburg, stated that removal of a feeding tube from a 39-year-old Florida woman who suffered severe brain damage in 1990 cannot be justified at this time by Church teaching, the woman, Terri Schiavo, was moved from a nursing home to a hospital under emergency medical circumstances.

A family spokeswoman said Schiavo's parents were not notified until 24 hours after the move, which took place Aug. 13, and that staff at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Fla., were working under the instructions of Michael Schiavo, the woman's husband and legal guardian, not to disclose her medical condition to her parents.

Disagreement over her medical condition and care has pitted Michael Schiavo against Terri's parents in a years-long legal battle for her life that could come to an end Aug. 25, when her feeding tube is scheduled to be removed by court order. Michael Schiavo is petitioning for removal of the tube.

Patricia Anderson, representing the parents and siblings of Terri Schiavo, filed an emergency motion for stay Aug. 13 in the Florida Supreme Court, requesting the court to halt further attempts to end Terri's life until the court decides if it will review the case.

Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, the diocese in which Terri Schiavo has been residing, in a long-awaited statement Aug. 12 called the situation “tragic,” noting that medical experts disagree about Schiavo's condition and chance of improvement.

Stating that Catholic teaching advises “presumption in favor of providing medically assisted nutrition and hydration to all patients as long as it is of sufficient benefit to outweigh the burden involved to the patient,” the bishop “strongly recommend[ed]” that both Schiavo's husband and her parents seek “a clearer understanding of her actual physical condition.”

Her parents should be allowed to pursue medical therapy that may improve her condition, he said. The statement leaves open the possibility of licitly removing the tube after further study.

Bishop Lynch added that it is “a much harder case” than many imagine and warned against “excessive rhetoric” such as using the word “murder” or calling the trial judges “murderers.”

A more strongly worded statement was released in late July by the Catholic Medical Association, which said that removing Schiavo's tube would cross the line from allowing death to causing death and “cannot be justified by currently promulgated Catholic moral principles.”

The Catholic Medical Association is an independent group and does not speak officially for the Church, though members seek to serve the Church by applying official teaching to the medical field.

Cutting off Schiavo's food and water also would set a dangerous precedent in the larger, public debate over assisted suicide and euthanasia, said the Catholic Medical Association's president, Dr. Robert Saxer, and Schiavo's father, Robert Schindler. A number of disabilities-rights group have rallied to preserve Schiavo's life.

“It's scary that a precedent is being set legally,” Schindler said. “They're lowering the bar to encompass more persons who are incapacitated.”

The Catholic Medical Association statement came just before a Florida appeals court granted a 30-day stay on the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, allowing her parents time for another appeal to the state's Supreme Court. If the high court does not rule on the case it previously declined to hear, the fate of Terri Schiavo is scheduled to return Aug. 25 to Circuit Judge George Greer, who ordered her tube to be removed.

“It's a roller-coaster ride emotionally,” Schindler said. “You don't know how long your child is going to be alive.”

Schiavo collapsed at home on Feb. 25, 1990, and suffered severe brain damage from lack of oxygen. She cannot speak yet can breathe on her own and is not on a respirator. She has been found by some doctors and Florida courts to be in a persistent vegetative state.

She is not brain-dead, her family points out, and often tries to communicate with visitors. A videotape that appears to show her smiling and responding to voices and objects can be viewed on the family's Web site, www.terrisfight. org.

But Michael Schiavo has testified that Terri once said she would not want to be kept alive artificially if she should ever become incapacitated. The court accepted this testimony as the expression of her will, in the absence of any written directives.

Schindlers’ lawyer Anderson filed an appeal with the Florida Supreme Court on Aug. 4. She told the Register that there is “a genuine medical dispute about her diagnosis and prognosis” that should be further investigated.

The Catholic Medical Association's statement, signed by Saxer and Dr. Steven White, head of the group's Florida chapter, acknowledges that the authors cannot render judgment on the precise medical condition of Terri Schiavo since they have not examined her.

“However,” the text continues, “we can and will comment on the application of Catholic moral principles which the Church has given us to determine when medically assisted nutrition and hydration can legitimately be withdrawn in a patient who is not terminally ill or imminently dying.”

Saxer, a retired pediatrician living in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., said that since Schiavo has no underlying illness and is not imminently dying, the Church's absolute ban on euthanasia should be invoked.

“If they remove the tube, she will die as a result of that action,” he told the Register. “It will be a most liberal decision in favor of the ‘right to die’ that will have untold effects on our laws. They are trying to set the standard of life at whether a person can feed herself. Persistent vegetative state is very hard to diagnose and is often misdiagnosed. I think she should benefit from therapy and rehabilitation that she has not had in 13 years.”

Citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2277), the U.S. bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care (No. 58), a statement to U.S. bishops by Pope John Paul II during an ad limina visit and a 1998 statement on end-of-life care by the bishops of Florida, the Catholic Medical Association statement concludes: “The withdrawal of nutrition and hydration … will result in her death. The tube feeding itself does not impose an excessive burden on the patient. [Removing the feeding tube] in this circumstance violates in its intention the distinction between ‘causing death’ and ‘allowing death.’”

Judie Brown, head of the Stafford, Va.-based American Life League, told the Register: “Terri is critically impaired and disabled. To deny her food and drink at this time would be killing her, plain and simple.”

In his statement Bishop Lynch said Catholic teaching does allow a feeding tube to be “withheld or withdrawn where that treatment itself is causing harm to the patient or is useless because the patient's death is imminent, as long as the patient is made comfortable.”

In Schiavo's case, he said, “it is not clear whether [the feeding tube] is delaying her dying process to no avail, is unreasonably burdensome for her and contrary to what she would wish if she could tell us.” If the feeding is not helping her “or it is unreasonably burdensome for her and her family or her caregivers,” it “could be seen as permissible” to remove the tube, he wrote.

Yet, he added, if the tube is removed “simply because she is not dying quickly enough and some believe she would be better off because of her low quality of life, this would be wrong.”

Michael McCarron, executive director of the Florida Catholic Conference, the public-policy arm of the state's bishops, said that since the case was “a local matter” of the St. Petersburg Diocese, the conference would not make a separate statement.

Saxer, who has worked in the past with the Florida Catholic Conference on medical ethics issues, told the Register that he hesitated to speak independently but time was running out in Schiavo's case. “We can give our organization's public statement based on the published teachings of the Church,” he explained.

George Felos, a lawyer for Michael Schiavo, insists that removing the feeding tube would not be euthanasia, which he said he opposes. Citing his client's testimony regarding Terri's thoughts on artificial medical treatment, Felos called removing the feeding tube “her choice.”

Terri Schiavo's family has begun a petition drive asking Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene in the case. They say they have collected some 22,000 signatures so far.

Stephen Vincent writes from Wallingford, Connecticut.