[Dialogue] Letter to Editor

[Karl Hess]

It seems to me important to distinguish the 
'pro-life' movement and the right-wing political 
grandstanding from the real  Catholic position. 
See below.

Karl Hess


'No Moral Sense'
A Jesuit bioethicist believes the religious right 
is exploiting Terri Schiavo and that there is no 
moral or legal obligation to keep her alive.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Brian Braiker
Newsweek
Updated: 12:40 p.m. ET March 24, 2005

Editor's Note: The Supreme Court declined to hear 
the Schiavo case on Thursday, Mar. 24. The 
justices did not immediately provide legal 
reasons for their decision, and no justice issued 
a written dissent with the one-page ruling.


March 23 - Despite congressional intervention, a 
three-judge panel of the United States Court of 
Appeals for the 11th Circuit refused to order the 
brain-damaged Terri Schiavo's feeding tube 
reinserted, intensifying the fight over the fate 
of a woman who has become a symbol-some say 
pawn-for both the right-to-life and the 
right-to-die movements. Schiavo's parents, Robert 
and Mary Schindler, said Wednesday that they plan 
to appeal one last time to the U.S. Supreme Court.

  Meanwhile, peripheral players and pundits 
weighed in on a case that is drawing wall-to-wall 
cable coverage. From Washington to Rome, leaders 
of the religious right have repeatedly called for 
American courts to protect Schiavo-a Roman 
Catholic woman whom medical experts say is in a 
persistent vegetative state with no hope of 
recovery-from certain death if her feeding tube 
is not replaced. The Vatican's leading 
bioethicist called such a death a "pitiless way 
to kill" someone.

But much like in the United States, where 
consensus is a rare commodity, even the Roman 
Catholic Church is not unified in its stance on 
Schiavo. The Rev. John J. Paris, a bioethics 
professor at Boston College and an expert on the 
intersection of law, medicine, and ethics, 
believes that past statements made by the pope 
have been taken out of context, misrepresented as 
church doctrine and applied to the Schiavo case. 
He says Schiavo, who has a moral right to die, 
has been exploited by the religious right to 
further its agenda-and if the pope himself, who 
has no known living will, were in a similar 
situation, it would be "an invitation to open 
chaos" at the Vatican. Paris spoke to NEWSWEEK's 
Brian Braiker about euthanasia, high-tech life 
support and moral obligations. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: The church has said that providing food 
and water does not constitute an extraordinary 
way of sustaining life.
John J. Paris: What you're quoting is a statement 
that was issued by the pope at a meeting of [an] 
international association of doctors last year in 
Rome. This was really a meeting of very 
right-to-life-oriented physicians. It was an 
occasion speech. The pope meets 150 groups a 
week-a group comes in and the pope gives a 
speech. If the pope tells the Italian Bicycle 
Riders Association that bicycle riding is the 
greatest sport that we have, that doesn't mean 
that's the church's teaching, that the skiers and 
tennis players and golfers are out. It wasn't a 
doctrinal speech.

So it's been taken out of context?
It has to be seen in the context. This has to be 
seen in the context of the pope's 1980 
Declaration on Euthanasia, which says that one 
need not use disproportionately burdensome 
measures to sustain life. Even if the treatment 
is in place, if it proves burdensome it can be 
removed. The terms you'll hear them talk about 
all the time are "ordinary" and "extraordinary." 
Well, those words are so confused in the minds of 
the public that they no longer serve any useful 
purpose. People think of extraordinary as 
respirators or heart transplants. Extraordinary 
never referred to technique or to hardware-it 
referred to moral obligation. What are we obliged 
to do?

What is the church doctrine?
The church doctrine, and it's been consistent for 
400 years, is that one is not morally obliged to 
undergo any intervention. And, of course, 400 
years ago they weren't talking about high 
technology. Here's the example one of the 
moralists of the 16th century gave: if you could 
sustain your life with partridge eggs, which were 
very expensive and exotic, would you be obliged 
to do so? The answer is no, they're too 
expensive. They're too rare. You can't get them. 
They would be too heavy an obligation to put on 
people.

Would the pope's recent tracheotomy qualify as a partridge egg?
No. This was best put together in a statement by 
the chief justice in the Brophy [v. New England 
Sinai Hospital Inc. right-to-die] case. He said 
even such things as artificial nutrition and 
fluid can become extraordinary if they become 
burdensome when you have to sustain somebody for 
15 years on it. That's surely burdensome. It has 
nothing to do with the technique itself. 
Antibiotics could be extraordinary if a patient 
is dying and it's not going to offer many 
benefits. The bishops of Florida themselves have 
addressed this issue of the papal statement. 
Right-to-lifers aren't attacking this Jesuit 
priest, me; they're now attacking all the bishops 
of Florida saying they are deviating from the 
pope. What the right-to-lifers want to say is the 
pope said you must always use artificial 
nutrition and fluids for patients in persistent 
vegetative state-and there's no exception. The 
Florida bishops say that's not what the church 
has taught and that's surely not what this means.

But at the Vatican Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, a 
bioethicist like yourself, said "starving" 
Schiavo to death would be a "pitiless way to 
kill" someone.
The people in the Vatican are the same as the 
people in the United States: they run the gamut. 
He represents the radical right-to-life segment 
of thinking. But he's not the only voice in the 
Catholic Church. He undoubtedly wrote that speech 
the pope gave. And now he says, "See? The pope 
said it!"

So you're saying providing Schiavo with food and 
water is not morally obligatory?
For 400 years the Roman Catholic moral tradition 
has said that one is not obliged to use 
disproportionately burdensome measures to sustain 
life.

  And in this case, you view this as disproportionately burdensome?
Fifteen years of maintaining a woman [on a 
feeding tube] I'd say is disproportionately 
burdensome, yes.

The editorial page of The New York Times said she 
has been "exploited" by the religious right in 
this country.
I agree with that. First of all, this is not a 
fight about a feeding tube in a woman in Florida. 
This is a fight about the political power of the 
Christian right. The argument from Bishop 
Sgreccia is like saying, "Tom DeLay just said, 
'In America we never stop feeding tubes'." That 
doesn't make it true. The fact of the matter is 
that feeding tubes are removed every day in 
hospitals around this country. We solved this 
question medically in the United States in 1984 
when the American Medical Association said that 
patients who are terminally ill and/or in a 
persistent vegetative state, it is ethically 
acceptable to remove all medical interventions, 
including artificial nutrition and fluids. That's 
the official statement of the American Medical 
Association.

The pope, himself a sick man, has yet to make 
known a living will. What do you suppose would 
happen if he were in a similar situation?
This is the open invitation to chaos. There are 
no rules in the Vatican on this sort of thing 
because, up through 1950, really, it wouldn't 
happen. Doctors tended to kill people more than 
save them. Unless there's some secret document 
that the pope has written, he becomes a pawn in 
the hands of bureaucrats. This organization is no 
different than any others. 

How does the stance of Schiavo supporters in the 
church reflect religious teaching about death?
Here's the question I ask of these 
right-to-lifers, including Vatican bishops: as we 
enter into Holy Week and we proclaim that death 
is not triumphant and that with the power of 
resurrection and the glory of Easter we have the 
triumph of Christ over death, what are they 
talking about by presenting death as an 
unmitigated evil? It doesn't fit Christian 
context. Richard McCormick, who was the great 
Catholic moral theologian of the last 25 years, 
wrote a brilliant article in the Journal of the 
American Medical Association in 1974 called "To 
Save or Let Die." He said there are two great 
heresies in our age (and heresy is a strong word 
in theology-these are false doctrines). One is 
that life is an absolute good and the other is 
that death is an absolute evil. We believe that 
life was created and is a good, but a limited 
good. Therefore the obligation to sustain it is a 
limited one. The parameters that mark off those 
limits are your capacities to function as a human.

But is anyone arguing that for Schiavo to die 
would be an "unmitigated evil"? They just don't 
want her death to happen unnecessarily.
It's not happening unnecessarily. It's happening 
because her heart attack has rendered her utterly 
incapable of any future human relationships. The 
Republican riposte to this is astonishing: 
interest in states' rights disappearing, interest 
in privacy of the individual to be free of 
government intrusion disappearing. If we 
implemented the policy articulated by the 
Congress and the president, we'd have everyone 
going forever!

And Social Security would really be in trouble.
[Laughs.] It just makes no moral sense.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7276850/site/newsweek/?rf=nwnewsletter