Are feeding tubes Ordinary or Extraordinary treatment?

[awkward customer]

Is it possible that Michael Schiavo was a loving husband who was carrying out his wife's wishes when he applied for her feeding tube to be removed? 

The question is moot.

If nutrition and hydration are ordinary interventions, then removing them would be either murder or, if she had indeed wished it, "assisted suicide", which most Catholics should be intelligent enough to recognize as murder by another name.

The decedent's wishes would matter only if nutrition and hydration were extraordinary interventions.

Catholic bioethicists and the CDF maintain that they are, in fact, ordinary.

I agree with you if feeding tubes are Ordinary treatment.

The Conciliar Church might claim that Feeding tubes are Ordinary treatment, but the Traditional Church doesn't.  Fr Cekada was a Sede, as I am, and it is his position that I am defending.  Traditionally speaking, feeding tubes are Extraordinary treatment.

[queen.saints]

I wish you'd said this earlier.  Then I would have known what I was up against.  I knew there was no logic to your arguments.  Now I know why.

I'm sorry you feel this way.

I was under the impression you had learned a lot from this discussion and would be happy to no longer live believing so many false claims.

So far since the beginning you have learned that you were:



Wrong about her not being able to breathe and being forced to use a machine

Wrong that she was "brain dead" (a very different condition, especially from a Catholic perspective, than PVS, which she was officially diagnosed as)

Wrong that any doctor who personally examined her in the 12 years before she died ever claimed that she could not take food and water orally

Wrong that the traditional Catholic priests and professionals in question who came to the conclusion that feeding tubes were ordinary means in this case were basing it off of post-conciliar theology.

Wrong that her husband had "the final say, traditionally speaking" in what kind of medical treatment she received.

Wrong that she was provided with ice chips and Jello

Wrong that one's ability to leave a hospital bed affects the objective standards of the means used to sustain life

Wrong that feeding tubes could never be considered ordinary treatment


Wrong that her doctors tried to administer food and water

Wrong that the armed guards were only outside and not in her room

Wrong that she was not considered alive by Church teaching

Wrong that "the claims of murder, execution and euthanasia are ridiculous" when she was denied any form of food and water and her husband testified multiple times under oath that he was trying to end her life because he believed she was already dead and that she had specifically asked not to be allowed to live if she was a burden.

Wrong that a human being can only survive 3 days without water


Wrong that her "body is signalling to the world that life is over, that it's time to go" when her body actually held out average or slightly longer


Wrong that her body was not truly alive and "only capable of being kept in a reflexively maintained state due to the intervention of a machine" when she lived for 13 days with no aid.

Wrong that it could ever be "loving" and not "murder" to violate Natural Law and carry out someone's wish "not to be allowed to live", if that really was their wish.

Wrong that I ever claimed Michael Shiavo is a liar or that my position depends on it.







I thought you'd be grateful to have learned all these new things.

[queen.saints]

It seems to me that there is disagreement on this thread as to the true medical situation of Shiavo, and that that is at the heart of moral decision-making and moral judgment ex-post-facto.

Yes, exactly.

The people arguing that this was not euthanasia have repeatedly been shown mistaken in their claims surrounding her medical situation.

[queen.saints]

I have a general question for those who believe that feeding tubes are ordinary means without exception/question. 

Which people would those be? Nobody ever said that.

[Baylee]

I have a general question for those who believe that feeding tubes are ordinary means without exception/question.

Which people would those be? Nobody ever said that.

I give up.

[awkward customer]

Queen. saints,

You should have disclosed much earlier that you believe Bulimia is a mortal sin and that this mistaken notion is the reason you believe Terri Schiavo couldn't have suffered from the condition.

It would have saved me a lot of trouble at least because I would have stopped discussing this case with you if I'd known.

As a result of this thread I am now convinced more than ever that Fr Cekada was right.

I'm also convinced that many people have been swept up in some kind of shared hysteria over this case, evident by the insults hurled at Michael Schiavo and the use of terms like "execution" and "murder", not to mention the mobs at his door.

Fear of the secular 'right to die' agenda isn't a good enough reason for abandoning Traditional Catholic principles in favour of made-up theology and claims of medical knowledge that can't be verified.

[Baylee]

I have a general question for those who believe that feeding tubes are ordinary means without exception/question.  I'm hoping this question gets to the heart of the matter without the "noise" and emotion of the Schiavo case.

Do you believe that the Church teaches that we have the obligation to use a feeding tube and to never remove it (regardless of circumstances, how long we had it, etc) if we were placed in a similar situation?

Would we die in mortal sin if we included the removal of a feeding tube in some fashion in our own Living Will/Advanced Directive?

Would this be equivalent to Assisted Suicide (ie. "I want you to kill me") no matter what?

Furthermore, do priests advise Catholics not to do so?

When I look at it this way, I still find it hard to consider the feeding tube ordinary means and not extraordinary. 

I'm not sure if this link answers your question.  (It also weighs in on Terry Schiavo specifically.)
https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/end-of-life-decisions-ordinary-versus-extraordinary-means-12733

It seems to me that there is disagreement on this thread as to the true medical situation of Shiavo, and that that is at the heart of moral decision-making and moral judgment ex-post-facto.  I think it is very hard to know definitively the morality of any case without intimate medical knowledge of it.

Note that I have no position on the case in question, as I lack such intimate medical knowledge.

I appreciate that you're not taking a position either way.  I feel similarly.

As for the link, it doesn't answer it for me because I don't believe JPII has the authority to make such a conclusion.  There is absolutely no reason why I should I trust that he has a correct Catholic interpretation here. I believe it is still an open question until a true Catholic pope makes a pronouncement on it.

I was actually wondering what others thought who seem to have been asserting that the feeding tube is ordinary means which is why it shouldn't have been removed. With queen's recent question to me, I'm not sure what the other side is arguing anymore.  They are all over the place.       

[queen.saints]

Queen. saints,

You should have disclosed much earlier that you believe Bulimia is a mortal sin and that this mistaken notion is the reason you believe

...that according to Catholic teaching it would be wrong to believe this of someone without more evidence than was provided. 


Bulimia is defined as, "binge eating followed by purging or fasting, and excessive concern with body shape and weight."

I was taught in traditional Catholic school that this behavior is gravely sinful, especially when it leads to serious consequences as was claimed.

If you weren't taught this in school, then it is another piece of information you have learned from this discussion.




Here is an excerpt from a traditional Catholic Catechism on how we are obliged to take care of our body:

" Our body is not our own, it belongs to God (1 Cor. vi. 13). It belongs to God, not only because He created it, but because Christ purchased it with a great price (1 Cor. vi. 20). We are bound to take care of what is the property of another. The tenant of a hired house has no right to damage or destroy that house, so we are not at liberty to injure or destroy our body, the abode of the soul, created by God and belonging to Him. We must not do with our body what we will, but what God wills...

we are under a strict obligation to do nothing that tends to destroy health or life.

Consequently it is a sin to rashly hazard one's life, wantonly to injure one's health..."


http://www.catholictradition.org/Tradition/commandment5.htm





"Bulimia nervosa" was first ever diagnosed as a "mental disorder" in 1980, well after Vatican II.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/482466/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulimia_nervosa

[Miriam_M]

Bulimia is a psychological illness - the result of internal perverse self-concept (perfectionist standards, craving for attention, hatred of self, or other). Mortal sin requires full consent of the will and full control of one's faculties.

[diaduit]

I don't know about the ordinary or extra ordinary means but I would say it became Euthanasia when that rotten husband decided to remove comfort from Terri while she was dying. You wouldn't do it to an animal, by removing the PEG feed which imo is extraordinary, she was going to die anyway so he just wanted to speed it up, what a disgusting human being.

And maybe, just maybe God allowed her to suffer for 13 days to wake the world up and expose what it is to interfere with God calling you home. Terri sure earned her place in heaven please God.

  I remember my Mum begging me for a sip of water even when the hospice staff were using those glycerine swabs to help her thirst because she might aspirate with water, she was able to tell me that the thirst was horrific and she didn't care if she aspirated...I gave her little sips, she didn't aspirate.
Chestertonian who said that PEG feeding isn't all that comfortable and he had regular infections at the PEG site.

But the "disgusting" and "horrible" Michael Schiavo claims he was keeping his promise to Terri.  Are you familiar with his side of the story, posted earlier?

What if Terri Schiavo did make her husband promise to never leave her in a totally dependent state?  What if she did have what St Alphonsus Ligouri called a "subjective repugnance" for the treatment she was receiving and the situation she was in?

The thing about a subjective repugnance is that it's subjective.  Just because one person can tolerate a particular Extraordinary treatment doesn't mean that everyone can. And Catholics have the right to refuse Extraordinary treatments that are subjectively repugnant.  Michael Schiavo, her husband, was acting acting within the Traditional teachings of the Church and had the authority to do so.

Terri Schiavo's parents, on the other hand, refused to accept the reality of their daughter's condition just as they refused to accept the bulimia that had originated during her teenage years. Perhaps they were over-compensating for earlier neglect by stirring up a media and political storm which resulted in mobs of misguided, emotionally charged pro-lifers making Michael Schiavo's life a misery.

Queen.saints believes that bulimia is a mortal sin, therefore Terri Schiavo couldn't have had bulimia, therefore Michael Schiavo is lying.  Is that typical of the level of understanding associated with this case?

PS.  By the time Terri Schiavo died, her brain had atrophied to half its normal size according to the autopsy report.  She had been unable to communicate at all ever since her collapse.  Comparing her situation to that of your mother, who could talk, isn't comparing like with like. 

Yes AC, I read his side and not for a split second do I believe one iota from him, if he truly did what he did out of love he would have allowed Terri to have the comfort of relieving her dry mouth when dying and he would have allowed the priest to give her communion.  Nope he does not come to this with clean hands.  As for fulfilling a promise, knowing 22 year olds glib comments for example , I'd love to go out like a light (not Terri but countless people I know) and when it comes to it, they cling to life and try all means possible to stay alive.  I can't take seriously the comment in the context that testimonies quoted in this thread.
Terri was murdered imo, the time to not put in the peg feed was initially when she was in a coma and see if nature takes its course but once it was in, ML schiavo had no right to remove it.   

[TradGranny]

From the famous euthanasia group, The Hemlock Society, that her husband's lawyer was a prominent member of:

That explains a lot about the husband.

[awkward customer]

Here is an article by John Daly that I found on Cathinfo which discusses Fr Cekada's argument. 

Fr. Cekada put together an article on these matters, which made waves by being opposed to the almost unanimous voice of Catholics and conservatives.  His main arguments were as follows:

1.   The Pro-Life Movement, where Catholics work hand-in-hand with Protestants, Jєωs and humanists, sometimes tends to make an absolute out of prolonging human life, something which is not in conformity with sound doctrine.  In such cases, we must always resist being dragged down to the emotional level and make our judgments based on the teachings of the Holy See and approved theologians.

2.   The Church teaches that it is not against the 5th Commandment to terminate extraordinary means of prolonging life.

3.   The permanent use of feeding and hydration tubes for the benefit of a sick person, without any hope of recovery to more than a semi-vegetative state can be considered as an extraordinary means.  Such is the judgment of several respected theologians from the time of Pius XII.

4.   In a case where solid arguments exist in favor of the legality of terminating the means of artificially maintaining life, where civil law is neutral, and where the doctors leave the decision to others, the one and only person (according to Catholic theology) competent to make such a decision for a married woman, is her husband, and not her parents.

5.   This being the case, it is far from obvious that a mortal sin would be committed in removing the feeding tubes from Terri Schiavo.  To maintain the contrary argument is to pervert the conscience of Catholics not only as regards their obligations to maintain life artificially, but also on the matter of spousal rights.

https://www.cathinfo.com/crisis-in-the-church/fr-cekada-euthanasia-and-the-terri-schiavo-affair/

According to the comments, Michael Schiavo, Terri's brother and sister-in-law all testified in court that Terri  had told them that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means in a dependent state.  I'll check this, if possible.

[awkward customer]

mistake

[Miriam_M]

Bulimia is a psychological illness - the result of internal perverse self-concept (perfectionist standards, craving for attention, hatred of self, or other). Mortal sin requires full consent of the will and full control of one's faculties.

Just clarifying that I still have no position in the argument, since I am not well-read on it. I posted my comment to remind us what the Church's position is regarding mortal sin in general (knowledge, conscious decision, control of faculties).

[Bernadette]

Weren't her fluids withheld as well?  I can't remember the exact details, I was a wee lad at the time. 

Yes, and Cekada references that:

"A wicked husband still maintains his headship over the wife before God and his "domestic and paternal authority.  He has the right to say yes or no to ice chips and Jello, unless and until an ecclesiastical or civil court, for a grave and just reason, legitimately impedes him from exercising his right."

The ice chips and Jell-O reference would only be for someone who could swallow.

A husband has the right to refuse jello and ice chips for his wife? What if she's conscious? Does he still have the same right?