Feeding is a moral obligation

These things are necessary to officially declare….or remind….with the right-to-die movement finding new ways to justify ending lives they deem unworthy of continuing life. Cardinal Justin Rigali and Bishop William Lori have taken to the pages of America magazine to clarify Church teaching recently misrepresented on those pages by two theologians, on end-of-life care.

What is “medically ordinary” can be “morally extraordinary.” This is a valid distinction, but there is an aspect of patient care even more basic than the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary medical treatments: the “ordinary care” owed to sick persons because of their human dignity, which the Declaration said should be provided even when certain medical interventions have been withdrawn as useless or overly burdensome. Pope John Paul II and his successor held that food and water, even when their provision may require technical medical assistance, constitute the “basic care” that patients should receive.

One would think this to be inherently obvious. But Pope John Paul II found it necessary, during the Terri Schiavo ordeal, to address the condition referred to as “persistent vegetative state” and spell out the moral obligations to such patients, who are persons with dignity…and not actually dying.

In the case of medically stable patients in a “vegetative state,” who may live a long time with continued nourishment but will certainly die of dehydration or starvation without it, the obligation to care for our fellow human beings presents a very direct challenge. Such a patient’s condition should not be characterized as “unstable” or terminal simply because it would become so if the patient were deprived of food and water.

Anybody would become terminal if deprived of food and water.

John Paul II drew attention to this problem, insisting that such families “cannot be left alone with their heavy human, psychological and financial burden,” but must receive assistance from medical professionals, society and the church. This is the true meaning of “compassion” in the face of illness and disability, to “suffer with” the afflicted and lighten their burden through our support.