Category: Moral Theology

A reader writes:

Dear Jimmy,

I was wondering if you could help me, im rather at my wits end and i dont know what to do. I read an article on your website dated March 08, 2004 and it was a real eye-opener.

For about 8 months now i have been really struggling with bad thoughts. I am a young christian, who by no means is perfect, but i love God and respect him. However the bad thoughts that i have are pure evil, often satanic in nature and anti-God.

They upset me so much, everyday i am often in tears asking for forgiveness. I then get scared that they are going to come true against me or my family and loved ones. I would never ever want them to come true, i would never do them and i hate them but i dont know what to do to get rid of them.

Your article stated that it is best to ignore them, but i feel i cant as these are so bad and so against God that i need to ask for forgiveness. How can i ignore something so evil?

I dont wish to burden you with my problems but i dont want to be this bad person anymore. I just want them to go away so that i can lead a good life, pleasing God not upsetting him.

I want to begin by saying that my heart goes out to you. You are carrying a very special cross that is close to Jesus’ heart. I will pray for you and I ask all who read this to pray for you, as well as for all who suffer from this condition.

I cannot make a medical diagnosis as I am not a doctor, but it sounds very much to me like you are suffering from an episode of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that is manifesting itself as sinful thoughts. I am virtually certain from what you have said that this is what is happening in your case.

First, a little info on OCD:

• HERE ARE THE OFFICIAL DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR OCD, ALONG WITH NOTES FROM THE DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION.
• HERE’S A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ON OCD.

One of the characteristics of OCD is that it generates obsessions, which are recurrent thoughts that one cannot get rid of, that one finds painful, and that are "ego-dystonic." That is, you feel like they just force their way into your mind unbidden, even though you don’t want them there.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder where part of your mind tries to throw painful thoughts at you in order to increase your stress level. The reason you get recurrent thoughts about sin rather than thoughts about happy things is that these thoughts pain you. That’s what the condition tries to do: Give you painful thoughts.

It is obvious from what you write that you do not want these thoughts, that you hate having them and want desperately to be rid of them.

That’s good!

It shows that these thoughts are ego-dystonic and thus (THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART) they are NOT SINFUL.

Merely having a thought occur to you is not a sin, no matter how bad the thought it. At most, having the thought occur to you is just temptation. It only becomes sin if you endorse it with your will. But the fact that you clearly do not want these thoughts and that you oppose them means that you are not consenting with your will (CERTAINLY not in the fully human way needed to commit a mortal sin).

As a result, you are shouldering a particular kind of cross–or, to use a better analogy–you are wearing a particular crown of thorns. That means that you are especially close to Jesus’ heart, because that he looks with special compassion on those who suffer in this manner.

Now let me give you several pieces of good news, which I’ll follow up on below:

1. IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT THAT YOU HAVE THIS CONDITION!
2. THIS CONDITION IS TREATABLE!
3. YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
4. THESE THOUGHTS ARE NOT SINFUL!
5. GOD LOVES YOU!

In regard to the first piece of good news, it is not your fault that you have OCD. It is a condition that is rooted in the biology of the brain. In particular, it seems to be related to a deprivation of the neurotransmitter serotonin.

In regard to the second piece of good news, the condition in very responsive to treatment. You CAN get better. You DON’T have to feel this way. While you may or may not be able to completely eliminate the thoughts that you are having, you can get a grip on them so that they are not causing you the kind of torture that they are now. I’ll say more about treatment below.

In regard to the third piece of good news, OCD is a very common condition. About one in every 40 people has OCD. (Consequently, there are lots of OCD resources and support groups out there.)

In regard to the fourth piece of good news, I’ve already sketched the basis for it: These thoughts are not things you are endorsing with your will (certainly not in a human manner) and so they at most represent temptation (and really not even that since you aren’t attracted but rather horrified by them).

In regard to the fifth piece of good news: It’s true! GOD LOVES YOU! He will be with you while you deal with this condition, and he will never leave you nor forsake you.

Now let’s talk treatment. I have a significant amount of familiarity with this as I encounter a good number of OCD folks in my line of work. In fact, some of the other readers of the blog have OCD. Here’s what I can recommend regarding treatment:

1. Go to a doctor, preferably a psychiatrist, and get diagnosed.
2. With the doctor, explore getting on a medication known as a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI), which is the class of drugs that has been shown to have a marked impact on OCD symptoms. Other medications may be helpful as well, but the SSRIs generally are the main ones used.
3. If your symptoms do not require medication, consider using the nutritional supplements like 5-HTP, which is a precursor of serotonin and thus has a similar effect to an SSRI: Increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain. (NOTE! DO NOT USE THIS NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENT AND THE DRUGS MENTIONED ABOVE AT THE SAME TIME WITHOUT A DOCTOR’S SUPERVISION!)
4. Get cognitive-behavioral therapy or counselling to help you work your way past the thoughts. This is important as medications alone don’t make all the thoughts go away. You can get this kind of therapy from a psychiatrist or psychologist.
5. Consider joining an online or face-to-face support group for OCD sufferers.
6. Watch the TV show Monk on USA Network. It’s about a detective who has OCD and who manages to be a productive member of society anyway. In fact, his OCD makes him a better detective as he notices (and obsesses about) details that nobody else spots. Many OCD folks really appreciate this show and say it helps them in that it offers a sympathetic portrait of someone with their conditions, lets them laugh about it, and lets them see their condition from an "outside" perspective.
7. When you are in confession, DO NOT attempt to laboriously explain all of the thoughts that you are having. Attempting to do this will reinforce and re-awaken the thoughts. This gives you an excusing cause from making a materially integral confession in regard to the thoughts–which you really don’t need to do anyway since they aren’t sinful since you don’t approve of them, but I know you’ll feel the need to confess them (if you’re Catholic). Here’s how to do that. Say this: "I have obsessive compulsive disorder, which causes me to have thoughts of a sinful nature that I do not want and do not approve of. I wish to confess any slight degree of cooperation of the will I may have given to these thoughts." And LEAVE IT AT THAT.
8. Talk to your doctor/counselor/spiritual director about the need not to dwell on these thoughts in confession. Once they tell you (as they will) that dwelling on these thoughts has a tendency to reinforce and re-awaken them and that it is better not to dwell on them in detail in confession you can say to any priest who asks, "I have been told by a medical professional/my spiritual director that I should not confess these in detail lest it make the problem worse." (If nothing else, you can say that "a professional" told you this since I have told you and I’m a professional.)
9. If you’re not Catholic, you should seriously investigate becoming Catholic (a) because Catholicism is true and (b) because the sacrament of confession will provide tremendous relief for you. There is nothing like having a priest authorized by God to absolve your sins (John 20:21-23) do so. When you can rely on the sacrament, you won’t have to worry about trying to do mental rituals in order to try to "feel" forgiven. Also, Catholics have long pastoral experience in dealing with folks who have conditions like this. In Protestant circles there are few established means for dealing with the condition known as scrupulosity (which correlates highly with OCD). Indeed, the term generally isn’t known in Protestant circles. But these are much better understood in Catholic circles.
10. Finally, to the extent you possibly can, simply ignore the thoughts. Relax and put them out of your head. You may find it helpful to say to yourself: "Sorry! But I’m not allowed to listen to that part of myself!"

Hope this helps, and God bless!

20

In order to win the battle on marriage in this country, pro-family individuals need to be able to make their case in a way that is not dependent on religious arguments because so many (even persons of faith) will allow these to be partitioned in public debate and ignored at voting time.

Fortunately, the natural law basis for marriage is clear enough that this is fairly easy to do.

Some even have hopes of putting the argument in a way that may appeal to libertarians.

JENNIFER ROBACK MORSE, FOR EXAMPLE.

I wanted to tie up something that I meant to blog about during the Terri Schiavo crisis, though events overtook me and I wasn’t able to do so.

During the crisis, I received several requests from folks for comment about why food and water were considered "ordinary" means of sustaining life, regardless of their method of delivery, whereas going on a respirator was considered "extraordinary" means.

It’s a good question. Food, water, and oxygen are all essential material requirements for the typical care of the body. If the first two must be delivered regardless of the means of delivery, why not the third?

This is an area where the advent of new medical technologies has had a significant impact, and the Church is still sorting these matters out, but let me offer you what I can on this.

There is a development in the terminology of moral theology that seems to be happening at present. The older terminology divides life-saving measures into "ordinary" and "extraordinary" means, whereas the newer terminology divides them into "proportionate" and "disproportionate" means. Currently the Magisterium is using both sets of terms, but there is a shift that seems to be occurring from the former to the latter. In the future, the former terminology may be replaced by the latter or the former may be interpreted so that it means the same thing as the latter. We’ll have to wait and see.

In any event, the old distinction between "ordinary/extraordinary" is undergoing significant change because the advent of technology has made many things that would have formerly been quite extraordinary before the 20th century to be quite ordinary in the 21st. What was considered an ordinary thing to do for a sick person was much the same in the 10th century as it was in the 15th, but would bear very little resemblance to what would be an ordinary thing to do for a sick person today.

The shift in terminology is reflected, for example, in the Holy See’s 1980 Declaration on Euthanasia, which says in part:

Those whose task it is to care for the sick must do so conscientiously and administer the remedies that seem necessary or useful. However, is it necessary in all circumstances to have recourse to all possible remedies? In the past, moralists replied that one is never obliged to use "extraordinary" means. This reply, which as a principle still holds good, is perhaps less clear today, by reason of the imprecision of the term and the rapid progress made in the treatment of sickness. Thus some people prefer to speak of "proportionate" and "disproportionate" means. In any case, it will be possible to make a correct judgment as to the means by studying the type of treatment to be used, its degree of complexity or risk, its cost and the possibilities of using it, and comparing these elements with the result that can be expected, taking into account the state of the sick person and his or her physical and moral resources [SOURCE].

The Holy See thus notes that the term "extraordinary means" is problematic because it is imprecise and subject to rapid technological progress. While acknowledging that the term can still be used in principle, it offers a series of considerations for determining whether a treatment should be used that converge on what is captured by the terms "proprotionate" and "disproportionate"–i.e., the complexity and risk of the treatment, the cost and possibility of using it, the result that can be expected, the state of the sick person and his resources, etc.

In the absence of a Magisterial clarification of the meaning of the ordinary-extraordinary distinction that sets it on a firmer footing, I’m inclined to say that the proportionate-disproportionate distinction better captures what Catholic moral theology requires–and what older moral theologians were after when they used the terms "ordinary" and "extraordinary."

It seems to me that when they referred to "ordinary" means of saving someone’s life, they meant things that had reasonable prospects of helping, did not significantly burden the patient, did not put him at great risk, and were not extremely difficult to pursue. By contrast, if something had low prospects of helping, greatly burdened the patient, put him at great risk, or was extremely difficult to pursue then they regarded it as an "extraordinary" thing to do.

Today, because advancing medical technology is rapidly shifting things from the "extraordinary" column to the "ordinary" column, it seems to me that "proportionate" and "disproportionate" express the same distinction in a less confusing way.

At least most of the time.

‘Cause there’s a big disclaimer that needs to be mentioned.

Whenever you get the word "proportionate" into a moral discussion, certain individuals will self-righteously sniff and say "That’s just proportionalism."

Wrong.

The idea of proportion is something that involves weighing the costs and risks of an action against the benefits to be obtained by pursuing it. That’s not at all alien to Christian moral theology. Indeed, both Testaments of the Bible contain material that is based on this kind of prudential judgment.

What proportional-ism does it is takes the idea of proportion and absolutizes it, making it the only criteria that is relevant. It allows any action to be undertaken as long as the benefits it stands to result in are considered proportional to its costs and risks under an immediate, this-worldly calculus. That’s why proportional-ism is condemned. But the use of the idea of proportion in making a moral judgment is not. In fact, in many situations it is required–failing to make use of it being a sin against the virtue of prudence.

So I don’t want to hear a lot of "You’re just talking about proportionalism" stuff in the combox, because I’m not. Self-righteous sniffers take warning.

Having said that, let’s apply these principles to the situations of artificially providing food, water, and oxygen.

It seems to me that in principle they are all the same: They all are things the body needs to survive and their administration thus does not count as medical treatment. The default position on all three is that, unless something else is affecting the situation, their administration is proportionate and morally obligatory.

However, in various situations all three of the administration of all three can become disproportionate and thus non-obligatory.

We have already discussed, for example, the case of an individual whose body has stopped manufacturing albumin. In such a situation, continuing to administer food and water intravenously will result in horrible damage being done to the body and thus is not morally required. In that case the administration of food and water has become disproportionate to the good to be achieved and it is no longer obligatory.

If it’s merely a matter of putting a food and water tube in someone’s mouth or nose or stomach and the person is otherwise able to process food and water then the adminsitration of them will be proportionate (unless something else is affecting the situation), but in the case of someone who can’t manufacture albumin, even a simple food and water tube becomes disproportionate because his body is no longer able to process fluids and he will be positively harmed by pumping them into the patient.

When it comes to oxygen, if it is merely a matter of attaching an oxygen tube to someone’s nose so they can breathe, again this is a simple enough thing that it’s going to be proportionate (unless something else is affecting the situation) and thus morally obligatory.

But if we’re talking about someone who needs an iron lung (a very small class of people today) then we’re talking about a much more burdensome and costly procedure that can more quickly become disproportionate.

That’s the difference. While food, water, and oxygen are all are all necessary substances for the body and while their artificial administration is presumed to be proportionate until proven otherwise, certain means of delivering them become disproportionate or "extraordinary" more quickly because technology has not yet been developed that renders them non-burdensome.

In the case of food and water, we have means that are fairly non-burdensome unless there is something wrong with the patient’s ability to assimilate food and water. In the case of oxygen we may be improving on this point, but at least certain oxygen-delivering technologies are still more burdensome and thus fall into the disproportionate or "extraordinary" category more easily.

When something falls into the disproportionate or "extraordinary" category, one can morally choose not to use it even though death will inevitably result. One cannot, however, discontinue proportionate or "ordinary" means in order to cause death, neither may one deliberately undertake any other course of action that, as a means or as an end, is intended to kill the patient.

No matter what advocates of proportionalism would say.

Y’know the good ol’ days when everyone had ten kids?

Those days never existed.

Or, to be more precise: The never existed for more than a few people in particular areas in particular historical circumstances.

The family my cattle-ranching grandmother was born into, f’risntance, had 12 kids, 10 of whom survived to adulthood.

But that’s always been the lucky exception. Not the rule.

How can we know that?

We can do the math.

Suppose Adam and Eve had four kids (Scripture says they had more, but suppose it was only four).

Suppose that their kids paired off and each pair had four kids, just like Adam and Eve.

That’d be eight kids in the next generation.

Now suppose this patten of four kids per couple kept up each generation.

Y’know how many generations it would take to arrive at the 4 billion folks who were alive c. 1980? 32 generations.

Remembering, though, that more than one generation is alive at a time, let’s suppose that two generations were alive at any one time (that would be some grandparents, all parents, and some of the children who would be born; we’ll ignore great-grandparents and great-grandchildren for statistical purposes since so few of these have been alive at the same time before the advent of modern medicine).

Y’know how many generations it would take to get to the six billion people currently alive at present? Again: 32.

Now suppose that on average historically parents had their children four children between the ages of 15 and 45, so the parents were an average of 30 years old when they were between their second and third of their four children.

Y’know how long ago Adam and Eve would have lived? That would be 960 years (32 generations x 30 years at middle of breeding life).

Hm. Doesn’t sound right, does it?

But wait! Maybe there are some factors we haven’t accounted for! Let’s try an easy one: Not everbody gets married. Some people go through life single–or they’re in an infertile union and can’t have kids. Let’s suppose that happens to half of all the children that have been born historically: They either stayed single or couldn’t have kids.

In this case, each generation of parents could have eight kids, with only four of them going on to have a brood of eight kids, four of whom would then reproduce, etc. If only half the kids end up breeding due to singleness or infertility, y’know how many generations that would push back Adam and Eve from the present generation?

One.

In that case, the human race would be 33 generations and 990 years old.

But maybe there are other factors–like disease and war. Those have claimed a lot of people’s lives and kept them from breeding. Suppose that these two factors cut each historical generation in half. In that case, each previous batch of parents would have had 16 kids–half of which were prevented from breeding because of illness or war. Of the eight surviving kids, four didn’t breed because of singleness or infertility, leaving four to find spouses and breed a new batch of 16 kids, only 4 of which would then go on to breed, etc.

How far back would that push Adam and Eve?

One generation.

In that case the human race would be 34 generations and 1020 years old.

Okay, so maybe there’s another factor.

How about the obvious one, biblically: The hugelarge lifespans that the early chapters of Genesis record?

Assuming those are literal, they do create some extra room between us and Adam and Eve. But not as much as you’d think. While Adam may have lived to be 930 years old according to Genesis 5:5, he had his third son–Seth–when he was only 130 years old according to Gen. 5:3. That’s not unusual in the Genesis 5 genealogy. The patriarchs tend to have their kids (relatively) young compared to their hugelarge lifespan (I am so envious of that lifespan, lemme tell you), and it’s the kid-bearing age that counts for making Adam and Eve more remote from us, not the overall time the partiarchs lived.

Those (relatively) high kid-bearing ages also only apply to the first few generations of the human race. Things drop off pretty quickly after the time of Noah.

But there’s a bigger problem.

Even if we give full allowance for pushing Adam and Eve back in time based on the long lifespans recorded in Genesis, that doesn’t change the number of generations between them and us. And therein lies the problem.

If y’all will take a gander at the genealogy of Jesus Christ offered in Luke 3, y’all’ll see that there are 76 generations between Adam and Jesus–and that was 2000 years ago. Allowing for the 30 years per breeding generation over the last 2000 years, that would mean that there have been 67 geneations between Jesus’ day and today, meaning that there have been 143 generations between Adam and us.

Now that’s a problem if you want to say that folks in the past had large numbers of kids on average.

Y’know how many people would be alive today after 143 generations in which each pair of parents had an average of only four kids who went on to breed? (Leaving aside those who were single, infertile, or killed by disease or war.)

There would be 16,725,558,898,898,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or almost 17 tredecillion people.

The only conclusions available would be (a) there are this many people alive now, despite appearances, (b) the human race is much less than 143 generations old, despite the Bible and science, or (c) the average number of children folks have had who went on to breed is less than 4–way less. Still above 2 or we’d never make any progress at all, but way less than 4.

My money’s on the last of the three options: The average number of breeding kids folks historically have had was much closer to 2 than 4.

If I’ve done my math right, it would take an average of 2.33 breeding children per generation to arrive at the present global population after 143 generations.

If there were some missing generations in the biblical genealogies (as is likely) then the number would be less than 2.33 but still higher than 2. For simplicitly, let’s assume that it’s 2.33, though.

How we account for this number is an open question. Certainly they had more kids than became breeders. Some stayed single. Some were infertile. Some died from disease. Some died from violence.

But I doubt that most parents had 8 kids and only 2.33 ended up becoming parents. I suspect that the historical number was much closer to 4 kids, of which 2.33 became parents.

Yet that number isn’t realistic for parents who aren’t otherwise touched by infertility, disease, or war, which we have already accounted for (on average). If you have two folks get married at 15 and they start having a typical conjugal life then–barring infertility, death by disease, and death by war–they’re going to have a lot more than 4 kids before they hit 45.

This suggests one thing: Folks in the past have been far better at birth regulation than we in the modern world have given them credit for.

Much of the time, no doubt, due to pagan influence and lack of doctrinal clarity, they have used things like abortion and contraception to regulate birth in a morally illicit manner, but even in properly-morally-educated Catholic countries they have been exercising a lot more regulation of births than we’ve been imagining.

After all, if we started with just two good Catholics 1000 years ago in Europe and they had and average of four breeding kids per generation then there would be six billion such European Catholics today.

And there’s not. Nowhere close.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I love big families. I’d love to get married and have one. I’d love to see folks all over the place having them for the indefinite future, including starting colonies offworld to get elbow room for all the new humans. (Take a look in the chart above around generation 36 is you don’t see the need for new elbow room for them.)

But I also believe in looking at the past realistically, and at human nature realistically, and human nature is such that the idea that the regulation of births has only come into view in the last generation or two just doesn’t hold water.

Right or wrong, by good means or bad, the regulation of births has been with us much, much longer.

In case you ever wondered whether our society treats animals better than it does human beings, wonder no more:

You see, "force-feeding" humans via feeding tubes who never legally directed that they be deprived of food and water is a Bad Thing. In some cases, even when written directives are left that allow for "force-feeding," it is a Good Thing to deprive humans of feeding tubes anyway. But what happens if Flipper cannot swallow? Do we do the "humane" thing and deprive him of nutrition? Of course not! Dolphins require much better treatment than what we currently consider to be good enough for humans:

"In early March an estimated 80 rough-toothed dolphins stranded themselves in the shallows off Marathon in the Florida Keys.

"Rescue workers and volunteers worked nonstop to help as many as they could to return to deep water. Some dolphins made it. About two dozen died.

"For 26 that clung to life there was only one chance for survival — transfer to the Marine Mammal Conservancy rehabilitation facility on Key Largo, farther up the Keys from Marathon.

[…]

"In the pool [where the recuperating dolphins were kept], volunteers hold the dolphins and keep their blowholes out of the water so they can breathe.

"A veterinarian injects the mammals with vitamin E to help with muscle cramping. Unable to eat on their own, they are fitted with a feeding tube to get them the needed nutrition."

And so, roughly around the same period that Terri Schiavo was being dehydrated and starved to death by a Florida state judge’s fiat, the great state of Florida was inserting feeding tubes into dolphins.

God have pity on us.

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Meira Online for the link.)

A reader writes:

Thank you for your website. I have a question – I’m Catholic, my husband is not. 4 years ago, I talked him out of a vasectomy after the birth of our 2nd daughter, and convinced him that we could use NFP to not conceive (I wanted more children, he didn’t, I can provide more details if needed). Recently, I discovered I am pregnant. My husband was, surprisingly, happy, said he knew it could happen, that this was obviously God’s will, and that he’s going to get a vasectomy. I again voiced all my objections to it, and he, knowing that I am completely opposed to it, is going to go ahead with the vasectomy.

My question is, if I have intercourse with my husband after he has the vasectomy am I committing a sin? My brother-in-law pointed out that it is grounds for annulment, and made a comment that sounded like he assumed I wouldn’t be having intercourse with my husband after the vasectomy.

Your brother-in-law is mistaken in regarding this situation, as tragic as it is, as grounds for an annulment. (It is not.) He is also mistaken in (apparently) regarding continued conjugal relations with your husband as sinful.

Here is what the Church’s Vademecum for Confessors has to say regarding this kind of situation:

13. Special difficulties are presented by cases of cooperation in the sin of a spouse who voluntarily renders the unitive act infecund [i.e., who use contraception or who have themselves sterilized]. In the first place, it is necessary to distinguish cooperation in the proper sense, from violence or unjust imposition on the part of one of the spouses, which the other spouse in fact cannot resist. This cooperation [i.e., continuing to have relations]can be licit when the three following conditions are jointly met:

1. when the action of the cooperating spouse is not already illicit in itself;
2. when proportionally grave reasons exist for cooperating in the sin of the other spouse;
3. when one is seeking to help the other spouse to desist from such conduct (patiently, with prayer, charity and dialogue; although not necessarily in that moment, nor on every single occasion).

In your case, condition (1) is fulfilled because you, the cooperating spouse, are not being asked to do anything illicit in itself (e.g., you are not being asked to use contraception). Condition (2) is presumably fulfilled since it would likely do grave harm to your marriage if you permanently stopped conjugal relations. And condition (3) is presumably fulfilled since you will presumably over the course of time encourage your husband to repent of his action (though this may not mean a reversal of the vasectomy; just a repentence of having done it).

Assuming matter are as just described, it would appear that continuing conjugal relations with your husband after his vasectomy would be morally licit.

I hope, however, that you will be able to dissuade him from this course of action. You might try asking him to put it off for a while since it will obviously be a while before the new child is born and you are fertile again. This would give him time to think over the matter in more depth.

Hope this helps, and God bless!

20

Apparently in regard to remarks I made on Catholic Answers Live, a reader writes:

I was deeply saddened to hear you adopt the terminology of the radical fundamentalists in the very tragic case of Terry Schiavo and refer to those who adopted a different position in this matter as murderers.

You apparently did not hear me correctly. I did not say that those who "adopt a different position in this matter" are murderers. I said that those who killed her committed an act whose moral character was murder.

This is in keeping with John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae, where he writes:

[L]aws which legitimize the direct killing of innocent human beings through abortion or euthanasia are in complete opposition to the inviolable right to life proper to every individual; they thus deny the equality of everyone before the law. It might be objected that such is not the case in euthanasia, when it is requested with full awareness by the person involved. But any State which made such a request [i.e., to be killed] legitimate and authorized it to be carried out would be legalizing a case of suicide-murder, contrary to the fundamental principles of absolute respect for life and of the protection of every innocent life [EV 72].

The reader continues:

There are very sincere people on the other side of this case who believe that Mrs. Schiavo would not want to have lived in a vegatative state for 15 years.

True, but the sincerity of people regarding their belief in what Terri may or may not have wanted has absolute nothing to do with whether the moral character of the act was murder. People might sincerely believe that innocent Person X wishes to be killed, but even if that is true, it does absolutely nothing whatsoever to change the fact that innocent Person X is murdered if killed, as the pope indicated in Evangelium Vitae

Nearly two dozen court judgements, including independent doctors (not those hired by the family) and the guardian ad litem assigned to this case, all agreed that Mrs. Schiavo’s condition would not change, that her cerebral cortex was "jello."

This passes credibility. Nobody has two dozen court judgments (which are not the same things as testimony by doctors) saying that Terri’s cerebral cortex was "jello." If you’re going to argue this point, please do not make clearly false, over-the-top claims.

Further, the problem has been that after the initial finding of fact courts have not been revisiting the merits of the case in a generalized fashion and thus multiplying number of court rulings does absolutely nothing to broaden the scope of the medical evidence regarding Terri’s condition.

Further, it appears that only one independently-appointed doctor actually examined Terri.

Finally, despite the clearly false claim that Terri’s cerebral cortex was "jello" (look at videos of the woman and listen to recordings of her!) it makes absolutely no difference whether her condition would "change" (for the positive) in the future. The reason is that you simply cannot kill someone in Terri’s condition.

Whether you agree with that position or not, how can you honestly lump those who held the view that Mrs. Schiavo would not want to live in this state, in the same catorgory as someone who willfully murders?

I didn’t. As noted previously, you apparently misheard me. I said that the moral character of the act of taking Terri’s life was murder.

There is a difference, sir, and I think you know that difference.

I do, sir, and that’s why I didn’t say it. There is cearly a difference between the act of believing that Terri would not want to live in this condition and the act of deliberately taking the life of an innocent person. Indeed, a person could genuinely believe that Terri would not want to live in the condition she was in and say, "Despite Terri’s wishes, we cannot deliberately and voluntarily kill an innocent person." The question of what Terri may or may not have wanted is a matter of historical fact (and one that has been dramatically spun in the media; Michael "suddenly" remembering after 7 years that Terri wouldn’t want to live in this state passes credibility), but the question of whether one can deliberately and voluntarily kill an innocent person is a moral question. The two are incommensurate.

In regard to the latter, John Paul II writes in Evangelium Vitae:

[B]y the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral [EV 57].

The reader continues:

Comments like these [i.e., that people who disagree are murderers] only add fuel to the fire and seek only to further polarize the sides in this very heart wrenching dispute.

I am not very much moved by lamentations regarding how "polarized" a situation has become when it involves a matter of fundamental moral principle. It is, of course, a bad thing when a situation involving moral principle becomes polarized, though the reason is not the polarization itself; the reason is that some people aren’t adhering to the correct moral principle.

I also have no sympathy for the proposition that we ought to compromise on moral principle for purposes of avoiding a "polarized" situation.

However, I can agree that individuals on the other side of this issue should not be called murderers, which is why I did not call them that. To do that would be to needlessly inflame the situation, and thus I confined myself to appraising the moral character of the act in line with the writings of John Paul II.

Have you read the guardian ad litem’s report? You can read it online.

Thank you, though you didn’t include a link to it. It is not going to have any bearing, though, on the question of whether one can deliberately and voluntarily starve an innocent person in order to cause the person to die.

Did you know that the parents, in court testimony, stated that if Terri’s limbs would have incurred gangrene that they supported amputation?

This has no bearing on whether you can deliberately and voluntarily starve an innocent person to death.

That if her heart failed, that they supported open-heart surgery?

Ditto.

That even if Terri had expressed a decision to die, they would still fight to keep her alive?

Ditto.

These are well-meaning parents whose love for their daughter, in my opinion, had reached a level of a selfish love.

It seems to me that they were simply clear on the principle that one cannot deliberately and voluntarily starve an innocent person to death. There’s nothing selfish about that. That’s simply a determination not to commit murder.

I am a Catholic. I believe removing the feeding tube was wrong.

In light of your previous remarks, these come as surprising revelations, particularly the latter.

However, I do not believe in calling people in this case murderers when I don’t know their hearts.

Ah. It again seems that you misheard me. I did not call people murderers. I said that the moral character of the act that they performed was one of murder. This means that, objectively speaking, what was done was murder–i.e., the deliberate and voluntary killing of an innocent human being.

This makes absolutely no determination regarding the hearts of others. For all I know, Michael Schiavo and Darth Greer and the whole gang of folks who participated in this murder may be such twisted individuals that they have absolutely no personal culpability for their actions in this matter, but that does not change the objective character of the act they performed.

I also don’t believe death is the worst thing in the world and that Terri is in a far better place today.

You are correct that death is not the worst thing in the world. It is, for example, better to die than to commit murder. As to whether Terri is in a far better place today, this may be the case and I certainly hope that it is the case. It is not, however, a thing on which we can be certain as we do not know with certainty the state of her soul. For one who was just a sentence previously advocating not presuming the state of others’ hearts, you should recognize that the same applies to Terri.

We should still pray for her.