Did any of you catch this exchange?

[PassingFair]

This is the mentality that drives me nuts! The abdication of responsibility and freethought...

32. They are all screaming to keep the body alive,
No one was protesting the movement of Terri Schiavo's soul. They were screaming to keep her body alive. It's hypocrisy.


Response to Reply #32
58. That's a distortion of what the Church teaches.
The Catholics were protesting the denial of hydration and nutrition, which we view as ordinary, humane medical care. I don't know what the others were protesting, since I am not one of them.


Response to Reply #58
69. So you speak for all catholics?
MOST catholics I know were NOT protesting. MOST catholics I know sided with Mr. Schiavo.


Response to Reply #69
70. I know what the Church teaches.
Nice try.


Response to Reply #70
76. Must be tough keeping up on all the dogma....

Do you have to be retested every few years to keep up on the "pronouncements"?

Here is a snip of the CHA's view of tube feeding BEFORE TERRI, or BT, if you will.

Of course, this is from 1993, well before the current Terri era.

CATHOLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION (CHA)
4455 Woodson Road
St. Louis, MO 63134-0889

[phone]

Organizational overview: The CHA, founded in 1915, serves as the professional association for Catholic hospitals, extended care facilities, and health care systems in the United States. With 1200 member organizations, the CHA is the largest association of not-for-profit health care facilities in the country. After several task forces of theologians, clergy, health care givers and ethicists deliberated over how suffering, pain management, and the dying process should be viewed in light of the Catholic tradition, the CHA issued a definitive statement on the subject entitled Care of the Dying, A Catholic Perspective.

Position on tube feeding at the end of life

he familiar terms 'ordinary' and extraordinary' can be very misleading when explaining the substance of this teaching. . . . The Vatican Declaration on Euthanasia has recognized the ambiguity of these terms and suggests that we might more effectively refer to “proportionate” and “disproportionate” treatment. . . . The moral focus is not on the category of disease, the state of medical science, the type of treatment itself, or whether the treatment is simple, customary, non-invasive, or inexpensive. Rather, the true ethical considerations focus on the proportion between the benefit the patient would be able to appreciate from the treatment and the burden the patient would endure. For this reason, the principle is sometimes referred to as the burden/benefit principle. To make proper use of this moral principle, we need to measure the proportionate benefits and burdens for each particular patient, and from the patient's perspective. . . in order to determine whether provides a benefit proportionate to the burden the patient will have to bear. If the reasonably foreseen benefits to that patient (such as cure, reduced pain, restored consciousness and bodily functions) outweigh the burdens to the patient or to others, then the treatment is morally obligatory. But the treatment is not obligatory if it would be disproportionately burdensome or futile. . . . A treatment is futile when it offers no probable hope of success to restore the patient to a state of reasonable well-being (CHA 1993: 48-49).

he burden/benefit principle makes no moral distinction between withholding or withdrawing life sustaining treatment (whether it be a mechanical respirator, a cardiac pace-maker, a renal dialysis machine, antibiotics, or medically dispensed nutrition and hydration) when its use is futile or would produce burdens disproportionate to the benefits the patient could appreciate (CHA 1993: 49).


Response to Reply #76
77. It's also before John Paul's 1995 encyclical, 'Evangelium Vitae'
Encyclicals are Church teaching, btw...


Response to Reply #77
78. Ahhhh, I am schooled!
Edited on Fri Apr-01-05 11:45 PM by PassingFair
It is so hard to keep up with these encyclicals.....

It was OK in '93, but its MURDER now?

Tough keepin up!


Response to Reply #78
79. Glad to help.
Edited on Fri Apr-01-05 11:45 PM by Cuban_Liberal
Ignorance about official Church teaching has muddied this whole debate...


Response to Reply #79
81. So long as everything's
"official"


Response to Reply #81
82. Exactly.
Others in the Church are generally free to saywhat they want, but not teach what they want.


Response to Reply #82
84. and maybe the next guy will have a different take on it...
then what?


Response to Reply #84
86. Then he teaches. n/t




Response to Reply #86
87. and you follow? n/t




Response to Reply #87
88. Wouldn't be the first time.
Evolution in the Church's teachings aren't in the least novel.


Response to Reply #88
89. That means yes? n/t




Response to Reply #89
90. Yes. n/t




91. AOK n/t

[jonnyblitz]

1. interesting exchange and truly scary.

thanks for posting. :scared:

[Kathy in Cambridge]

2. Wow. Sounds like a fundamentalist Christian and not a Catholic

We have two very good family friends that are priests and I can't imagine anything like that coming out of their mouths.

Father Mike-a good friend of my dad's-realizes that there are nuanced interpretations to Catholic dogma, but less mature and learned minds may take some of these tenets too literally to be applicable.

For the record, most Catholics aren't that dogmatic...

[PassingFair]

3. Kathy calls it, is she psychic?

aahhhh! Those golden posts of yesterday...

[Warpy]

4. In the late 60s I went from drowning in a sea of fundy Baptists

in the south to drowning in a sea of fundy Irish Catholics in Boston, and I can truthfully say there are no differences between the mindsets. Both types are utterly convinced that not only do they possess the whole truth about everything in the universe, they are supremely qualified to lecture every other person on the planet that they're all going to hell because they may disagree over niggling bits of dogma that don't apply to their own lives in any fashion whatsoever.

In other words, a fundy is a fundy is a fundy. It's a peculiar sort of insanity that gives the sufferer a feeling of carte blanche about bullying the rest of the world.

No matter how hard you rub their noses into the actual teachings of their god and their religious leaders, they cling to whatever they're bullying you about.

The best thing to do is realize they are crazy and they're not going to change and to leave them alone to babble to the walls.