Vatican Chances Position on Food, Water for Patients in Vegetative State
A section on assisted hydration and nutrition for patients in a vegetative state marks a departure from the Catholic position that water and food must almost always be given. In such cases, death is not caused by the disease, but by those who withhold hydration.
Now, Monsignor Paglia claims that water and food are administered through technology [= a simple tube] and thus do not amount to "simple care procedures" but to so-called "aggressive treatment" that can be withheld.
For Paglia, the Catholic position represents "a reductive conception of illness, understood as a change in a particular function of the organism, losing sight of the totality of the person."
Nutrition and hydration become "therapeutic obstinacy" when there is "physical discomfort on the part of the patient".
In 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told the U.S. bishops that there is almost always a moral obligation to provide food and water to patients in a vegetative state, even by artificial means.
However, the booklet claims that his heretical position doesn't contradict with the opposite position previously taken by the Congregation.
After criticism, Paglia gave three interviews (VaticanNews, LaStampa and LaNazione) to defend his heretical position. He repeated that hydration and nutrition may constitute therapeutic obstinacy. Meanwhile, in Western countries the moral problem is not therapeutic obstinacy but euthanasia.
Picture: Vincenzo Paglia, © Mazur, CC BY-NC-SA, #newsNdpzbznzwq