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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Many Catholics still need to learn about the church's teachings on end-of-life issues, such as when it might be morally acceptable to reject or terminate life-prolonging treatments, said some participants at a Vatican-sponsored congress.
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This was made especially apparent during the legal battle over the fate of Terri Schindler Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged Florida woman who died in March 2005 after a court ordered that her husband could make her medical decisions for her. Michael Schiavo, the husband and legal guardian, said she would have wanted her feeding tube removed, while her parents said she would have wanted to remain alive based on her Catholic faith.
Bobby Schindler, Schiavo's brother and executive director of the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, said he attended the Vatican congress "to keep educating myself on these issues."
He told CNS that while the case "raised an incredible amount of awareness," incomplete or misleading media coverage also generated "a tremendous amount of confusion" that still lingers.
Pope John Paul II's 2004 allocution said artificial feeding and nutrition of patients in a persistent vegetative state was not "a medical act," but was proportionate and ordinary and therefore morally obligatory.
But Schindler said these teachings are not being conveyed adequately. He said U.S. clergy were being too silent from "apathy or indifference" and not coming to their defense in time.
Much confusion, he said, is caused when the case mistakenly is "lumped into these end-of-life discussions when in fact it was not an end-of-life situation."
"Terri was not dying, the brain injury was not going to kill her," and she died just like anyone else would die "if they took away our food and water," Schindler said..................
Ambiguities cloud moral, medical issues as end of life nears
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