US Conference of Catholic Bishops Takes End-of-Life Decisions Away from Patients and Doctors

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has just adopted a new directive that will make voluntary end-of-life decisions and living wills by patients a moot point if they are being treated in Catholic hospitals. This would affect the 600 hospitals run by the Catholic church.

The Conference’s directive states that Catholic hospitals have “an obligation to provide patients with food and water, including medically assisted nutrition and hydration for those who cannot take food orally . . . This obligation extends to patients in chronic and presumably irreversible conditions.”

Executive director Rev. Thomas G. Weinandy explains that if a patient’s advance directive states that she doesn’t want a feeding tube, “and the reason they don’t want it is they basically want to die, then the Catholic institution would explain to them they can’t cooperate with that and they would have to go to another institution.”

He follows with a hypothetical example of Catholic kindness and compassion:

If someone had a stroke and the doctor says he won’t die though he may be very sick, then they should give him nutrition and hydration [regardless of advance directives]. You can’t just starve him to death. It’s hard to know whether someone can regain consciousness or not.

Barbara Coombs Lee is president of Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit which provides end-of-life counseling and information on advanced directives (living wills). She comments,

If family members believe they know what mom or dad wants but get the message from hospital or nursing home staff that it’s sinful and wrong, that’s a pretty hard thing for a grieving family to deal with. It feels like someone is trying to guilt and shame them.

Guilt and shame. From religion? I can’t imagine.

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2. For sex slaves, Catholic Bishops’ ‘help’ is no help at all
3. Catholic Bishops’ ‘Marriage Guy’ Says Satan Makes People Gay
4. ‘NHS doctors have a duty of care that does not include proselytising’: BHA comments as Christian GP investigated following complaint
5. Why psychotic patients with religious delusions are harder to cure.

NoYourGod

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