Re: Euthanasia, Catholic Teaching
Fr: Excerpted from Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer. “Vatican rejects charges on John Paul II.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/ap_on_re_eu/pope_euthanasia (underscore mine)
Catholic teaching holds that it is morally wrong to refuse "proportionate" or ordinary care, which includes water and feeding tubes; refusing such care amounts to euthanasia.
The Vatican recently repeated its position on euthanasia and feeding tubes. A document issued Sept. 14 from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed that it considers the removal of feeding tubes from people in vegetative states to be an immoral act.
The Vatican distinguishes between feeding tubes, which it considers proportionate care, and "aggressive medical treatment" which can be disproportionate to any expected results or pose an excessive burden on the patient.
"In such situations, when death is clearly imminent an inevitable, one can in conscience refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted," according to John Paul's 1995 encyclical "Evangelium Vitae."
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