Saturday, October 10, 2015

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Before getting down to my main point, let me take this opportunity to offer a word of thanks to everyone who did so much work to make our parish Nationality Festival a big success. Thank you to the leaders of the committee and the booth chairs, to those who worked, to those who got things in shape and who cleaned up. Thanks also to those who simply came to enjoy a good meal and to support the parish. Now on to other matters…

There are weeks when I sit down at my computer, unsure of what to write about in this column. Sometimes the topic comes to me in an unusual way. This week I was wondering what to say when I got a call from the hospital. There was a patient whose family was facing some very difficult decisions regarding the patient. I helped them as best I could, though they admitted that they had almost hoped I would say, “This is what you have to do” and make the decision for them.

End of life decisions will never be easy. The teaching of the Church begins with the value of human life, so we are required to preserve that life by all ordinary means. It is the word “ordinary” that can make things difficult. Ordinary means include food and water, normal exercise and medical care. Where the difficulty comes in is when the means of preserving life are extraordinary. If a person would have to undergo a difficult procedure that will itself cause undue pain, such a procedure would be considered extraordinary. If a person cannot process food or nutrition in the normal way, then a feeding tube may be considered extraordinary if withdrawing the nutrition would not be the direct cause of death. We can morally avail ourselves of extraordinary procedures if we wish, but we are not obliged to do so. If the treatment becomes unduly burdensome to the patient or only prolongs suffering, then that patient has the right to refuse it. Notice that this is not euthanasia or “assisted suicide.” We cannot do anything that would cause someone’s death. Furthermore, we need to remember that a certain amount of suffering is not only unavoidable, it can also be salvific if we join ourselves to the sufferings of Christ on.

Often a patient who is in such a position is not able to communicate his or her wishes. Many people have “living wills,” in which they state what they do or do not wish in such a case. The problem is that it is difficult to cover all the possibilities, particularly when medical procedures advance at an amazing rate. It is much better to consider an Advance Directive with Durable Power of Attorney. In that case, we designate someone close to us to make decisions we are incapable of making, trusting that this person shares our Catholic understanding.

Finally, let me end this column on a lighter note. There was a piece going around the Internet in which a man wrote, “I told my family that if I am ever totally dependent upon liquids and machines to keep going, unable to communicate, they should pull the plug and let me die. So my wife poured out my beer, took away the TV remote and turned off the football game.”
             
                        Father H