Missionaries of the Sacred

Health is a good that requires care. This does not mean I have to be a “health nut.” But I am required to use ordinary means of maintaining health. Not to do so would be needless exposure to serious illnesses and death. By ordinary means, I refer to proper food, clothing and shelter as well as moderation in work, exercise, eating and relaxation. For normal life and health, I need to take the usual remedies for sickness and to follow medical advice when necessary, but I am not obliged to preserve my life and health by extraordinary means. I am not obliged to do what is practically impossible or disproportionately difficult. In extreme circumstances, I am not required to undergo a serious and costly operation if there is no hope of recovery. Likewise, if my health is deteriorating, I do not have to move away to another climate or adopt some regimen that would prevent me from earning a living, thus becoming a burden on others. If my death is immanent, my health must be preserved relative to my illness through ordinary means.

Today, with enhanced medical technology, we are able to prolong life, and many feel that it is better to practice mercy killing—euthanasia--than to have a sick or handicapped person endure extensive suffering. Pope John Paul II warned, “Here we are faced with one of the more alarming symptoms of the ‘culture of death,’ which is advancing above all in prosperous societies, marked by an attitude of excessive preoccupation with efficiency and which sees the growing number of elderly and disabled people as intolerable and too burdensome.”¹

Euthanasia is a violation of the 5th Commandment, You shall not kill. It is “act or omission, which of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering.”² The practice of euthanasia is part of the illusion that we can take control of death and bring it “about before its time.”³ It is disguised as an expression of compassion when in reality it is the direct killing of sick, dying or handicapped persons.⁴ Euthanasia emerges from an anti-life value. It attacks the sanctity of life.

Catholic Christian medical ethics makes a distinction between ordinary (proportionate) medical means of care and extraordinary (disproportionate) means of medical care.  Ordinary means of medical care refers to those treatments, procedures or medicines which can be given without causing excessive pain or expense. Extraordinary means of medical care refers to those treatments or procedures which cannot be given without excessive pain, or expense; and/or which do not offer reasonable hope or much benefit to the patient. Decisions to use extraordinary means should be evaluated humanly, not scientifically.

Extraordinary means do not have to be used in order to keep a person alive, if the person has already begun the process of dying.⁵ It seems to be negligent to treat a patient whose death is immanent as if he/she is going to be cured. One can, therefore,  “in conscience refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted.”⁶ The patient must be comfortable in his/her process of dying. At all times, however, ordinary means of medical care must be employed. When there is reasonable doubt about restoration of health, the doubt should be resolved by trying to restore health.

Moral evils may never be used to achieve ends, no matter how good and noble the results may be. Medical science therefore must never be used to directly kill an innocent human being. We are never permitted to misuse our lives or the lives of others. God does not give us full ownership of our lives. We remain as temples of the Holy Spirit even in moments of suffering and in the moments of the dying process.

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Justice and Peace Coordinator