Mar 30, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Two prominent Catholic ethicists say the media portrayals of Church teaching on end-of-life issues, surrounding the Terri Schiavo case, are often inaccurate and misleading, reported the Culture of Life Foundation in their most recent publication.
The two ethicists underlined that the Church makes a distinction between ordinary care, which is always required, and extraordinary care.
"The Church teaches that we have a moral obligation to support life," said Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"That obligation has limits. People talk about ordinary and extraordinary means. That just means that when the efforts to sustain life start doing more harm than good to the patient the moral obligation ceases to apply. Even then you should never abandon a patient and never deny them the basic care owed to everyone because of their human dignity," he told the Culture of Life Foundation.