Dear Dr. Gebel,
Someone forwarded to me your comments about my articles on the Schiavo case.
A number of other people involved in health care have written to me about the medical aspects of the case.
I not qualified to decide whether your medical opinion or other conflicting medical opinions about PVS, therapy, etc. are more in accord with the principles of medical science.
But common sense tells me that the method you used to arrive at your opinion -- reviewing CT images, watching a video and reviewing “summary/excerpts regarding testimony given in deposition transcripts” -- is no substitute for examining a live patient.
Unlike other doctors directly involved in the case, moreover, you have not been cross-examined on either your methods or your conclusions.
Be that as it may, I am qualified to speak about the moral issues in the case, and indeed, I am also obliged to do so.
If what you seem to be claiming is true and Terri Schiavo was somehow able to eat and drink by natural means, there is no dispute that those who cared for her would have been obliged to provide her with food and drink. To have withheld these would have been a mortal sin (unjust direct homicide) against the Fifth Commandment.
However, my writings on the Schiavo case centered on something else: the principles that Catholic moral theology would apply to removing a feeding tube.
I do not want my parishioners to be left with the impression -- due to the high emotions and bitter controversy fanned by the morally bankrupt media and by various lay and clerical grandstanders -- that something is a mortal sin when it is not.
Who knows when any one of my flock may be called upon to deal with the issue of a feeding tube for himself or a family member?
Here, put very bluntly, are the two essential questions in moral theology that I have sought to resolve:
(1) Does the Fifth Commandment under pain of mortal sin always require a sick person who is unable to eat or drink by natural means to have a doctor shove a tube into his nose or poke a hole into his stomach in order to provide food and water?
(2) Does the Fifth Commandment under pain of mortal sin then always forbid such a person to have these tubes removed, no matter what grave burdens -- pain, revulsion, depression, expense, etc. -- their continued use may impose on him or another?
The answer to both questions is no.
Having a hole poked in you, a tube shoved in and then having to eat and drink that way would be burdensome for any normal man.
Like the IV drip mentioned by the moral theologian McFadden (whom I quoted elsewhere), one could maintain this procedure would be morally compulsory “as a TEMPORARY means of carrying a person through a critical period.”
“Surely,” however, “any effort to sustain life PERMANENTLY in this fashion would constitute a grave hardship.” (Medical Ethics, 1958, p.269.)
(Perhaps some priest, layman or doctor who rejects this conclusion could get his own feeding tube inserted, live that way for fifteen years, and let us all know in 2020 whether the experience was a grave hardship or not. Any takers?)
Insisting (as some have done in the Schiavo case) that one is bound to this under pain of mortal sin (otherwise, euthanasia! murder!) contradicts Pius XII’s teaching that one is bound only to use “ordinary means,” which he defined as those “that do not involve any grave burdens for oneself or another.”
Imposing “a more strict obligation,” the pontiff warned, “would be too burdensome for most people and would render the attainment of a higher, more important good too difficult.”
So, even though as a doctor you may well consider poking holes into people and inserting permanent feeding tubes “by no logical measure extraordinary or unduly burdensome by any reasonable standard, moral, medical or economic" (as you say in your article), Catholics must nevertheless draw their understanding of extraordinary means from the Church’s moral teachings -- rather than from the practices and pronouncements of the medical-industrial complex.
In sum, by the standards of Catholic moral theology, the permanent use of a feeding tube constitutes extraordinary means and is therefore NOT obligatory. Like all such means, however, one is FREE to use it, “as long as one does not fail in some more serious duty.” (Pius XII)
But one cannot maintain that a Catholic is ALWAYS bound to use a feeding tube under pain of mortal sin — still less, that the refusal to do so constitutes “murder.”
Don’t try to invent a mortal sin where there is none.
In Christ,
The Rev. Anthony Cekada
I'm not taking sides here, but I'm just posting this info for those who don't know. Father Cekada is a sedevacantist.
I'm not taking sides here, but I'm just posting this info for those who don't know. Father Cekada is a sedevacantist.
You seem to be saying that unless a human can receive sustenance orally, any other method is "extraordinary", burdensome, and therefore not mandated.
In 1962--which is when time stopped for you--feeding tubes were considered extraordinary means of preserving life. So was open heart surgery and angioplasty. None of the three could realistically be classified as such today.
To say that a particular action may not be a mortal sin is beside the point. Christians are not called to simply avoid serious sin; we are called to give life the benefit of the doubt, especially when there are caretakers who are willing to assume the "burden" of attending to that life.
There is still considerable theological debate over end-of-life issues. But arbitrarily ending the life of an otherwise healthy woman without a clear and compelling indication that she would have chosen the same in an identical circumstance is morally problematic, to say the least.
If the casuistry of not crossing the line into mortal sin is your idea of moral courage, one is left to conclude that your standard for Christian witness to the world is very low.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, deal with the principles.
You aren't qualified to speak for the Catholic Church since you are in a schismatic church-and you SPEAK AGAINST THE HOLY FATHER!!
A "Reverend" in the Catholic Church has a Pope and a Church. You by your own choice choose to have neither. The contend of this post is the end result of what happens when we attempt to make it up as we go.
I'm not trying to dis you sir, but you are by no means a Catholic Reverend and thereby are perpetrating a fraud by calling yourself one.
Fr. Cekada, interesting question. Let me ask you: is being a quadriplegic and being confined to a wheel chair burdensome for any normal man? I would imagine it is. Can someone in this situation decide it is too burdensome for them to continue living, or can someone else decide it for them? There are any number of situations that people are living in that are burdnesome, and these situations could be applied to, including certain medications. I think a careful examintion of natural law is required. What happened to Terri Schiavo is not acceptable according to natural law. Time to reread the Angelic Doctor...
So starving an ill person,who was kept alive by feeding tube for several years...is not a sin?????
Oh Fr. You need prayers badly! I will pray for you like you do the Pope..but I will really PRAY!