Thanks for all your outraged emails. For the record, I think the benefit of the doubt in this case should go to keeping Schiavo nourished. But keeping a vegetative person nourished for decades in order to placate that person’s relatives – even when she has virtually no chance of reviving, and when her nearest kin opposes it – does not strike me as indisputably humane. And allowing someone to die a natural death is not the same as killing them. Here’s the Catholic Catechism on exactly that point:
Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘overzealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable and legitimate interests must always be respected.
The current papacy, in its extreme innovations with respect to the absolute primacy of life in all circumstances, strikes me as somewhat unbalanced. The message of Christ, after all, was that life begins in all its real glory after death. The extreme defense of keeping people on earth at all costs seems an odd priority for a Christian church. That is not to say that we should support euthanasia or abortion, but that we should also understand that for many people, death is not a catastrophe; it is a release. There is balance to be found here. But the Wojtila-adherents disagree. (More feedback on the Letters Page.)
WHAT ATTACK ADS? Will Saletan and Jake Weisberg helpfully debunk a Kerry-Gephardt meme that Howard Dean has gone negative in his latest ads. TNR’s blog also usefully debunks another piece of conventional campaign wisdom – based on a dubious Iowa poll.
The Dish 