When clear isn’t clear enough

Apparently, the Vatican statement released last Friday clarifying the moral imperative to provide basic nutrition and hydration to all human persons wasn’t clear enough for some people. Perhaps the people this was most intended to…inform.

The responses provide a clear rejection of the claim of certain theologians that the provision of food and water for patients in the persistent vegetative state is not morally obligatory. Nutrition and hydration are to be considered ordinary care, not an extraordinary means of preserving life.

The Vatican even attached a commentary to the directive.

That’s unusual.

We would note that it is unusual for the CDF to provide a commentary to its own responses. Typically, a Vatican reply to a “dubium” consists of a short response and that is all. The commentary is left to others. In this case, however, the CDF appended a very thorough explanation of its position that was evidently meant to ensure that there would be no occasion for theological misunderstanding.

Still, any possibility for an exception, no matter how remote or extremely rare, will be seized by some people as an elastic loophole. So some people are using language like ‘benefit’ and ‘burden’ to stretch the understanding of when it’s morally permissable to withhold food and water from a dying patient.

The answer is explicity, extremely rarely. And no one can waive that moral responsibility away, even for themselves, in an advance directive, living will, or…like Michael Schiavo…the desire to put an end to someone else’s life.