Below is a brilliant analysis of Pope John Paul’s remarkable statement on the dignity of patients diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state [PVS], written by Richard Doerflinger.
Already, the Pope’s subtle and brilliantly crafted argument is under siege by those determined to caricature his message, turn it into something it’s not, or insist it is a “radical” departure from previous Church statements. None of these spurious charges is within hailing distance of the truth.
But, truth be told, there is one paragraph that provides the interpretative key to unlock all that the Pontiff said in a lengthy speech delivered to an international congress on “Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas.” It is found in a mere 79 words in an essay Mr. Doerflinger wrote for “Life Issues”:
“He [the Pope] insisted that each and every human being has inherent dignity. Even the patient in the so-called ‘vegetative’ state, who cannot visibly respond to us, is no ‘vegetable’ but a human person loved by God; and ‘the value of a man’s life cannot be made subordinate to any judgment of its quality expressed by other men.’ That patient, and his or her family, deserve the love and support of the entire community so they will not face their burdens alone.”
In his “Life Issues” essay, Doerflinger gives the reader invaluable background that (a) explains why some so hysterically attacked the Pope, and (b) demonstrates that the Pontiff broke no new ground.
First, we’re reminded that there is a cadre of so-called “bioethicists” who issue pronouncements as if they came from Mt. Olympus. They have decided that there are a number of categories of cognitively-impaired people, such as those diagnosed to be in a PVS, whose lives are purposeless, meaningless, and therefore pointless. The “problem” is, if these helpless people are fed, hydrated, and given even minimal care, they don’t readily die!
What to do? The first order of business is to make starving and dehydrating patients sound palatable. How?
Steal a page out of the Nazi’s playbook. Turn them into something unrecognizable in order to justify the unconscionable.
Many dredged for euphemisms, but it was Daniel Callahan, founder of the hugely influential Hastings Center, who hit pay dirt in 1983. Callahan wrote that “a denial of nutrition may in the long run become the only effective way to make certain that a large number of biologically tenacious patients actually die.”
Indeed for this growing army of “super-annuated, chronically ill, physically marginal elderly,” Callahan wrote, denial of food and water “could well become the non-treatment of choice.” That's the grim background.
Second, as Mr. Doerflinger carefully points out, the Pope’s statement is “no radical change” in Church policy. “Since 1992, for example, the U.S. bishops’ Committee for Pro-Life Activities has urged a strong presumption in favor of assisted feeding for these patients. To be sure, the Pope’s statement is especially strong. But he knows that, even as medical science increasingly urges us not to dismiss these helpless patients, medical ‘ethics’ has tragically moved in the opposite direction.”
He adds, “Science is joining with morality to urge us not to make easy assumptions about these patients – not even, said the Holy Father, the assumption that they cannot feel the suffering of a death by dehydration.”
The irony is that at the same time bioethicists are becoming more and more insistent that the “biologically tenacious” should die, more and more physicians are coming to realize (as Mr. Doerflinger writes) that they “don’t know whether they can reliably diagnose” conditions such as PVS, ”predict its outcome, or estimate how much sensation and consciousness remains in these patients.”
Give his enormous stature, Pope John Paul’s speech holds the potential to profoundly change the worldwide debate. “With the Pope’s statement, the Church’s teaching authority has rejected each aspect of the theory that opposes assisted feeding of patients in a persistent vegetative state,” Mr. Doerflinger writes in National Right to Life News. “The Pope’s speech marks a new chapter in the Catholic contribution to efforts against euthanasia by omission.”
Readers of this Blog are in for a real treat.