GET THE STORY.
Fascinating coincidence (?) that this is happening at the same time as the Terri Schiavo battle.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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I wonder how many “I was raised a Catholic, went to Catholic school, married Catholic and voted Republcan” types are still on the side of removing the tube.
WHAT A CRUEL THING TO DO TO THE POPE! DENYING HIM THE EUPHORIA THAT TERRI SCHIAVO IS EXPERIENCING!
And yet he still chugs along…another tribute to the amazing power of the human spirit. If only Ms. Schiavo had the same chance…
I have to ask, regarding tube-feeding, especially with regards to Schiavo.
How is tube-feeding NOT an extraordinary means of support? Forgetting for a moment that the Pope has said it isn’t, what’s the basis for this?
Humans also need air to breathe; air is pretty basic. Why would it be okay to pull the plug on a ventilater, why is the ventillator considered “extraordinary” when a feeding tube isn’t?
Of course, food and water are in themselves ordinary. So is air. But there’s nothing ordinary about a feeding tube, like there’s nothing ordinary about a ventillator.
What am I missing? I had to side with Michael, against the Church, but this seems to be where I find myself leaning.
Any thoughts?
What exactly did your question mark after “coincidence” mean? It looks to me like you are implying it wasn’t a coincidence. The Vatican is shoving plastic tubes down your leader’s throat to make a point? That’s pretty sick dude.
April
No April, you misconstrue. A coincidence can be just two things that happen together, or it might be (as you seem to think Jimmy meant) that human forces bring about a coincidence, but we Catholics also think Providence plays a role, so that God might have seen the use of tube by the pope coinciding with the removal a tube from helpless Terri. That would be a coincidence too, but from on High. It need not mean that Chuch used a tube to make a point at all.
Eric,
I don’t think tube feeding is equivalent to a ventilator. I think it’s more comparable to a tracheotomy. A ventilator is used when a person’s lungs do not function, to do the work of the lungs. A tracheotomy is done for someone whose lungs are perfectly functional but has some impediment to the air reaching the lungs. Bypass the impediment and get air to the lungs, and they work just fine.
In Terri’s case, she has a perfectly functional gastro-intestinal tract, there is just an impediment to the food reaching it. The feeding tube just bypasses the impediment, and then her stomach, intestines, etc. work just fine. If they were to stop functioning, and some machine were used to digest and process food for them, that would be the equivalent of a respirator and would be an extraordinary means.
I just got my copy of next week’s Our Sunday Visitor. There is what looks to be a good, concise article on page 4 discussing what constitutes “extraordinary care” in Catholic teaching.
I read somewhere that Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was originally “installed” (for ignorance of a better term) NOT because she was unable to ingest food normally (i.e., through the esophagus), but rather because it was uncomfortable for her to do so – and also that it was an inconvenient, tedious, and sloppy job for the nurses to feed her. Does anyone know the validity of this claim? Because, it seems that such a measure, taken primarily as a convenience and not as a necessity, hardly could be construed to represent an extraordinary means of life-support.
Eric G:
To need a feeding tube and to be on artificial ventilation represent two entirely disparate levels of passivity and can imply two entirely disparate states of activity or non-activity in the central nervous system.
A person on artificial respiration has non-functioning lungs. A person with a feeding tube does not have a non-functioning stomach. What goes on in the lungs of a person on artificial respiration is merely a passive exchange of gases; what goes on in the stomach of a person with a feeding tube is active digestion.
A person on ventilation may be brain dead, with only the heart pumping on autopilot with no input from the central nervous system. A person with a feeding tube who is breathing on their own still has central nervous system activity; he/she is not brain dead.
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