The Church's Teaching on End of Life Issues More than Dilemmas and Controversies

CHICAGO (CNS) -- Church teaching on end-of-life issues is much more than "dilemmas and controversies," a priest-physician told a gathering of Catholic health care ethicists in Chicago March 1.

"Don't let people hijack our church anymore," said Jesuit Father Myles N. Sheehan, a geriatric oncologist who is senior associate dean for educational programs at the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago.

"Let's pay attention to church teaching and not to what someone reads in this liberal magazine or that conservative magazine," he added, noting that the 46-page "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services" is "a three-line document to the rest of the world.

"Too often, church teaching is reduced to "feeding tube in or out? Ventilator on or off?" he said. But an obsession with the controversies "makes us forget our areas of broad agreement."Father Sheehan spoke on the second day of a three-day conference on "Catholic Health Care Ethics: The Tradition and Contemporary Culture," sponsored by the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at Loyola's medical school and by the Catholic Health Association.[More]

My Comments:

A few years ago, I attended a seminar which was presented by Fr. Sheenan and was very impressed by what he had to share. He is both a priest and a physician so he is uniquely qualified. He answered many difficult questions about death, dying, feeding tubes, euthanasia, etc. that I was totally unaware of and that no priest had ever explained to me before. If you have a chance to attend a workshop on Catholics ethics and end of life issues like this, I highly recommend you go. You will learn new information that your parish priest won't tell you or perhaps can't tell you because he doesn't know the answers. We all need to learn more about this. It is essential for our own peace of mind and well-being and for that of our family members.

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