|
News Items:
|
|
Headlines
|
|
News Briefs
|
|
Stories
|
|
Movies
|
|
Word To Life
|
|
More News:
|
|
Vatican
|
|
Africa
|
|
Special Sections:
|
|
2006 in review
|
|
Inside the Curia
|
|
Archives:
|
|
Vatican II at 40
|
|
John Paul II
|
|
Other Items:
|
|
Client Area
|
|
Links
|
|
Origins
|
|
.
|
|
Did You Know...
|
The whole CNS
public Web site
headlines, briefs
stories, etc,
represents less
than one percent
of the daily news
report.
Get all the news!
If you would like
more information
about the
Catholic News
Service daily
news report,
please contact
CNS at one of
the following:
cns@
catholicnews.com
or
(202) 541-3250
|
|
.
|
|
Copyright:
|
This material
may not
be published,
broadcast,
rewritten or
otherwise
distributed.
Copyright
(c) 2006
Catholic News
Service/U.S.
Conference of
Catholic Bishops.
|
|
 |
|
CNS Story:
|
NUTRITION-DOERFLINGER Sep-14-2007 (430 words) xxxn
Vatican nutrition text not a ruling on specific cases, says official
By Regina Linskey
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Vatican's document saying it is a moral obligation to provide hydration and nutrition for individuals in a vegetative state is not meant to adjudicate specific cases but to provide moral guidelines, said an official with the U.S. bishops' pro-life secretariat.
The brief Vatican document approved by Pope Benedict XVI "doesn't directly answer" some specific questions that might arise in specific cases, said Richard M. Doerflinger, deputy director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
The debate surrounding end-of-life issues "is a debate that goes far more broadly than any one case," he told Catholic News Service Sept. 14. Giving the example of documents that were released in 1992, 1998 and 2004, Doerflinger said the debate "has been going on for years."
The outcomes of individual circumstances, such as that of Terri Schindler Schiavo, "depend on disputes of facts" involved in the cases, he said. For example, he said, there were debates on whether or not Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who died in March 2005 after a court ordered her feeding tube be removed, was in a persistent vegetative state.
The U.S. bishops refer people to the local Catholic Church when such issues arise, he said.
The Sept. 14 document was prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the form of a response to questions raised by the U.S. bishops' conference. It was signed by U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the doctrinal congregation.
Nutrition and hydration, even by artificial means, cannot simply be terminated because doctors have determined that a person will never recover consciousness, the Vatican said Sept. 14.
Exceptions may occur when patients are unable to assimilate food and water or in the "rare" cases when nutrition and hydration become excessively burdensome for the patient, it said.
When asked if it is a moral obligation to provide food and water to an individual in a persistent vegetative state, Doerflinger said the document responds that yes, each person is owed these measures "because of human dignity."
A persistent vegetative state "is not a reason to withdraw" tubes used to administer food and water, he said.
Doerflinger said the document does not speak directly to the case of a person who might request -- either orally or in a written statement -- that there be no tubes for food or water. He said he interpreted the document to say that a Catholic hospital should explain that it is not acceptable to remove such tubes.
END
Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250
|
|
|
|
