New Catholic mandate on comatose patients

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, January 3, 2010

The nation's Catholic hospitals, including three in the Bay Area, face a new religious mandate in the new year: to provide life-sustaining food, water and medicine to comatose patients who have no hope of recovery.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the directive Nov. 17 to the more than 1,000 church-affiliated hospitals and nursing homes in the United States and to all Catholic doctors and nurses. Invoking a 2004 speech by Pope John Paul II, the bishops said Catholics must provide nutritional assistance to patients with "presumably irreversible conditions ... who can reasonably be expected to live indefinitely if given such care."

A previous directive let Catholic hospitals and doctors decide whether the burdens on the patient outweighed the benefits of prolonging life. The bishops said the new policy was guided by "Catholic teaching against euthanasia" and by John Paul's observation that providing food and water "always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act." the rest