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Thursday, March 31, 2005

Ordinary and Extraordinary Care
Here are some illustrative quotes from Catholic teaching on end of life issues misrepresented:

Richard Doerflinger, Deputy Director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:
    The Church teaches that we have a moral obligation to support life. That obligation has limits. People talk about ordinary and extraordinary means. That just means that when the efforts to sustain life start doing more harm than good to the patient the moral obligation ceases to apply. Even then you should never abandon a patient and never deny them the basic care owed to everyone because of their human dignity.

Father Thomas Williams, dean of the theology department of Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University:
    The Pope uses two sets of terms. For treatment to be considered extraordinary, death must be "imminent and inevitable" and the treatment would result in "precarious and burdensome prolongation of life."

Father Williams quotes from Evangelium Vitae, the papal encyclical released ten years to the day before Terri Schiavo's forced dehydration and starvation began.