c. 2007 Religion News Service
Vatican Says Food `Obligatory’ for Vegetative Patients
VATICAN CITY (RNS) In an apparent response to the controversial death of a brain-damaged Florida woman more than two years ago, the Vatican on Friday (Sept. 14) declared it “morally obligatory” to feed patients in a “vegetative state,” even when their recovery appears impossible.
A document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the highest doctrinal body in the Roman Catholic Church, stated that the “administration of food and water … to a patient in a `vegetative state’ (is) morally obligatory” even if “competent physicians judge with moral certainty that the patient will never recover consciousness.”
The statement is apparently an indirect response to the case of Terri Schiavo, who died in March 2005 after her husband won a long legal fight to remove her feeding tube. In the weeks leading up to Schiavo’s death, several U.S. bishops and cardinals voiced support for her parents’ efforts to keep her alive.
Less than four months after Schiavo’s death, Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote to the Congregation asking the questions answered in Friday’s document.
The document makes an exception for cases in which food and water “cannot be assimilated by the patient’s body or cannot be administered to the patient without causing significant physical discomfort.”
An official commentary released with the document also allows for the possibility that “in very remote places or in situations of extreme poverty, the artificial provision of food and water may be physically impossible.”
The commentary cites a number of past church pronouncements on the subject, including a 2004 speech in which Pope John Paul II affirmed that persons in a “vegetative state” retain the “right to basic health care,” including food and water.
In a statement, The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation thanked the Vatican for its ruling, and said it hoped those “who persistently ignored the basic right to life of our daughter and sister, Terri, … will begin to open their eyes and hearts to the immutable and incontrovertible truth reaffirmed by the Holy See today.”
_ Francis X. Rocca
Former NCC Head Claire Randall Dies at 91
(RNS) Former National Council of Churches General Secretary Claire Randall,the first woman to lead the ecumenical group, died Sept. 9 in Sun City, Ariz. She was 91.
Randall’s tenure, from 1974 to 1984, came at a “turbulent time” for the nation and the church, said the Rev. Michael Livingston, the NCC’s current president.
In 1983, the CBS television program “60 Minutes” implied that the NCC and the World Council of Churches were leftist organizations that disregarded their conservative members. Reader’s Digest later echoed the charges.
Randall “firmly denied the fallacious allegations,” the NCC said in a statement released Sept. 12.
“Looking back on those days, it is especially obvious that her leadership skills and clear vision were those of a woman chosen by God `for a time such as this,”’ Livingston said.
An ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Randall was associate executive director of Church Women United before assuming the helm of NCC. She is remembered as a lifelong Christian educator, according to friends and associates.
“Claire Randall was a wonderful example of grace-filled leadership even in times of controversy,” said acting NCC General Secretary Clare J. Chapman. “I am quite sure I speak for many women, lay and clergy, who were inspired by her. … She will be missed.”
_ Daniel Burke
Group Tries to Counter Jewish Sports Myths
(RNS) When it comes to Jewish stereotypes, the legend of Woody Allen trumps that of Sandy Koufax. And even though Jews are more integrated into more facets of American society than ever before, the image of the bookish Jewish nebbish is a rather resilient one, an inside Jewish joke as much as a generalization.
Now Israeli tennis players Andy Ram and Jonathan Erlich want to change that. At the recent U.S. Open, the highly-ranked doubles team announced the launch of a Jewish Sports Foundation to help young Jewish athletes obtain sports scholarships to various sporting programs.
The goal is to “build Olympic gold medalists, but we’ll start small,” said Leslie Bernstein, a tennis fan with a background in Democratic politics who will direct the foundation from Washington, D.C. That means providing young Jews with role models and sports education, and simultaneously dispelling the myth that Jews are not good at sports, Bernstein said.
The foundation has already begun discussions with existing Jewish sporting programs like the Maccabi movement, a worldwide program of competitive youth sports that culminates with the World Maccabiah Games in Israel every four years.
_ Rachel Pomerance
Quote of the Day: Sister Angela Escalera of Los Angeles
(RNS) “We are just so hurt by this. And what hurts the most is what the money will be used for, to help pay for the pedophile priests. We have to sacrifice our home for that?”
_ Sister Angela Escalera, speaking about plans by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to sell the convent where she lives, and which has housed the Sisters of Bethany for more than four decades, to help pay for a $660 million sex abuse settlement. She was quoted by The Associated Press.
KRE/LF END RNS
