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.

A distinction must also be made between physicians administering medication to a terminally ill patient in order to hasten his/her death, and physicians dispensing drugs to relieve severe pain. The former is euthanasia and is morally unacceptable. The latter is morally acceptable because in “such a case death is not willed or sought, even though for reasonable motives one runs the risk of it; there is simply a desire to ease pain effectively by using the analgesics which medicine provides.”⁷

Pope Benedict XVI noted that “Ending a person's life is ‘false’ solution to the problem of suffering, and one not worthy of human dignity.”⁸ Indeed, no one has the right “to ask for this act of killing for ourselves or for those entrusted to our care; nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action.”⁹

Euthanasia affects the common good. It destroys our inalienable rights and equality as human beings. Once our right to life is taken away, then "our other rights will have no meaning. To destroy the boundary between healing and killing would mark a radical departure from longstanding legal and medical traditions of our country, posing a threat of unforeseeable magnitude to vulnerable members of our society.”¹⁰ Euthanasia is incompatible with physicians as healers. If legalized, it would weaken society’s principle of giving optimal care for the terminally ill. It would also weaken the prohibition of homicide.

Assisted suicide is one more example of our society’s strident emphasis on self-determination and freedom of choice. As with euthanasia, assisted suicide brings about death before its time. Unlike euthanasia, however, where the medial staff directly kills the patient, assisted suicide occurs when the physician assists the dying person to kill him/herself by providing the necessary lethal medication.

Suicide refers to the “direct killing of oneself on one’s own authority.”¹¹ Suicide is never morally permissible. It takes away the direct dominion and sovereignty of God over life and death. It is a violation of the love of God and self and “likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation and other human society to which we continue to have obligations.”¹² Suicide brings an end to God’s plan for each human being who is called by God to exercise responsible freedom and stewardship.

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.

Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory, notes that

Our opposition to physician-assisted suicide is not to hinder freedom but to protect the right to die with human and Christian dignity. Between the two extremes of active euthanasia or assisted suicide and the use of every possible means to prolong life at all costs, the Church offers a third alternative of action that can help go guide the public discussion.¹³

The Christian vocation summons us to be in solidarity with the sick, elderly and handicapped. The marks of this solidarity hinge on human dignity, concern for the poor and elderly, justice, the common good and stewardship.¹⁴ Christ calls us to see his face in those who suffer and be moved by compassion to care for them. (Cf. Matthew 25:40)

Br. Warren Perrotto, MSC

Justice and Peace Coordinator

1. Cf. Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (EV), 64.
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), 2277
3. EV, 64.
4. Cf. CCC, 227.
5. Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Euthanasia, May 5, 1980.
6. Ev, 65
7. Ev. 65
8. http://www.zenit.org/article-24973?l=english
9. Administration Committee, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, September 12, 1991.
10. Ibid.
11. John a. Hardon, SJ, Pocket Catholic Dictionary. NY: Image Books, Doubleday, 1985, p. 442.
12. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2218.
13. Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, Why the Church Opposes Assisted Suicide. http://www.americancatholic. org/newsletters/cu/ac0897.asp
    
14. Cf. Catholic Health Association of the United States, Our Vision for U.S. Health Care.
15. Pope John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, 10