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 In November 2009, the U.S. bishops issued the fifth edition of their Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs).
The directives—first released in the 1980s—cover all aspects of Catholic health care: the social, pastoral and spiritual responsibility of Catholic health care providers; the professional-patient relationship; issues in care for the beginning of life and care for the seriously ill and dying; and the forming of partnerships with non-Catholic health care providers.
Although the traditional media gave the ERD revision little attention, Internet blogs began buzzing about the change in Directive 58, which incorporated the recent papal clarifications on providing patients with adequate nutrition and hydration—even if they were in a persistent vegetative state. (After the jump...Related Articles & Resources)
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Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) entered our collective conscience in the early 1990s when the Hemlock Society sponsored an initiative in Washington state to legalize the practice. Following a defeat at the polls there, in 1992 they successfully placed a similar initiative on the California ballot. The California bishops -- through the California Catholic Conference -- led the opposition to Proposition 161, which would have legalized physicians to administer lethal drugs to terminally ill patients, and the initiative failed. Finally, in 1997, the Hemlock Society was successful in getting PAS-by then called the "Death with Dignity Act," legalized in Oregon.
In the early 2000s the Hemlock Society (newly christened Compassion & Choices) began a concerted effort to legalize PAS in California through legislation. During the decade the CCC-as a member of Californians Against Assisted Suicide, a broad coalition that includes disability rights organizations, healthcare professionals, low-income advocates and other faith-based institutions-successfully opposed every effort to legalize PAS in our state.
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by Gerald D. Coleman, S.S,
Vice President, Corporate Ethics, Daughters of Charity Health System
Since the 1980s, there have been a number of high profile cases involving persons receiving medically assisted nutrition and hydration (MANH), e.g., Claire Conroy, Paul Brophy, Nancy Cruzan, Hugh Finn, and Terri Schiavo. The provision of nutrition and hydration through the use of various medical interventions, sometimes referred to as “tube feeding,” is one of the most complex and controversial issues in contemporary bioethics.
Legal and moral debate has frequently arisen about tube feeding for a person in a persistent/permanent vegetative state (PVS). While these patients sustain certain brain functions such as wake/sleep cycles and automatic nervous system functions, all detectible activity of the neocortex has ceased, with virtually no expected prospects for recovery.
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Embracing Our Dying is an important part of the California Catholic bishops' proactive effort to build the "culture of life" in California as well as the very direct response to the political and social efforts to promote the acceptance and eventual legalization of "assisted suicide" in our state.
Early this decade, with polls showing Catholic support for "assistance in dying" at 60 percent-the same plurality as the general public-the bishops charged the California Catholic Conference with developing a program for clergy and parish leadership that offered theological, medical, legal, bioethical, political and pastoral perspectives on death and dying, end-of-life issues, and parish ministry.
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A 45-page PowerPoint that teaches about public policy, reviews the history of suicide/euthanasia, outlines Church teaching, reviews the current state of the law, and discusses current efforts in California to block the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. (Download 1.3 Mb) |
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