Try to Imagine

While admiring the nuanced article American Catholics and the State (8/2), one hopes that someday our legislators, with their degrees and posturing, will view our society through the eyes of the world’s people. Try to imagine the most primitive, illiterate, unlettered tribespeople on earth suddenly seeing our society of same-sex marriages and legalized abortion. They would be horrified. They would think we were crazy.

They would know a man is a man and a woman is a woman and they would reverence the miracle of birth.

Our nation may yet self-destruct.

(Rev.) George P. Carlin

Public Scandal

Having read your recounting of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s advice to the U.S. bishops on morality in voting (Signs of the Times, 7/19), I find it little wonder that there is a great deal of confusion. But it should be quite apparent to any right thinking person that the murder of 40 million innocents is not comparable to an individual’s marriage-vow problems. The point to be dealt with here clearly is public scandal. Any politician who purports to be Catholic and supports the intrinsically evil practice of abortion is giving public scandal, notwithstanding all the specious excuses that have been concocted.

Such a person should not be treated as a Catholic communicant for his own good and, more important, in order to avoid confusing people generally as to Catholic teaching and especially scandalizing the faithful. Christ’s teaching on giving scandal is frighteningly explicit.

The politician’s sin is openly public and should be dealt with by his pastor or bishop in a public manner, not with the hierarchy hiding in their offices for fear of unpopularity or loss of their tax immunity.

Not only does a public condemnation of the individual politician’s position emphasize his moral error in the arena most important to him; it would also serve to inform and emphasize to the public at large the importance of the issue in church teaching. Those who wish to follow Christ must be his witnesses and face martydom as he did in leading the faithful to the truth rather than worrying about public attack or approbation. It is significant and sad that the bishops who have done their duty by speaking out against the public scandal of pro-abortion Catholic politicians can be readily named because of their small number, which goes a long way to explaining the reasons for the difficulties, confusion and other scandals experienced by the American Catholic Church in the post-Vatican II era.

Thomas P. Dowd

Hopeful Heart

Several of my community read with delight Living With My Sisters, by Jeffrey J. Guhin (7/19). Here is a young man whose heart is in the right place, regardless of having to sacrifice his vocation to the sisterhood! Sisters need priests of this caliber in their livesthose who question their comfortable lifestyle, their positions of privilege and power, and those who listen rather than lecture. I salute Jeffrey and his vocation. His reflections give me hope.

Mary Ann Foy, R.S.C.J.

Political Choice

Your editorial The Political Season (8/2) distresses me. It is not so much a call for debate on the Iraq war as an opinion that the war was wrong and that the weight of evidence proves this. I must admit that I do not have an informed opinion on this. But I trusted Bush and his advisers, although I can admit that they may have been wrong. I do not believe all the facts are in yet, so I do not have as strong an opinion as you do.

In any case, assuming Bush was wrong on this most important of issues, one would conclude that he should be turned out. To turn him out, a vote must be cast for Kerry. For Catholics, is this wise? Not only Kerry but the entire Democratic party seems encamped on the side of the culture of death, as Catholics define the issues.

So we are left in a quandary. Vote for Bush or vote for Kerry. Which is worse?

Howard J. White

Stark Reality

Thank you for printing the picture with the caption Mother feeds malnourished child in Signs of the Times on July 5. I simply stopped and stared, disturbed and saddened. Having breast-fed all three of my children, I want to cry with and for the mother in the picture, knowing she is not providing the milk that every ounce of her mind, body and soul wants to produce for her child. I was disappointed in myself for daily agonizing over what food to make for dinner, rather than simply being grateful that I even have food available. As disturbing as the picture is, I’ll put it on our fridge, next to our kids’ artwork, made in their secure little world. It will call me to gratefulness and humility.

Thanks, America, for showing and reminding me of the stark reality hungry breast-feeding mothers and their children face daily.

Amy Giorgio

Thoughtful Advice

I’m glad that Cardinal Avery Dulles stood up for the rights of priests to receive due process when they are accused of wrongdoing (6/21). As he points out, the definition of sexual abuse has been expanded to include even verbal offenses, while at the same time the public embarrassment and losses from even being accused innocently have increased greatly. It is no service to one group (those alleging abuses) to take away the legitimate rights of another (those accused of abuses).

In the meantime, as Cardinal Dulles’s thoughtful article is published, the Vatican has promoted Cardinal Law to a major church in Rome, has dragged its feet on dealing with priest discipline actions and as yet has not punished or removed one American bishop for wrongdoing in the entire sexual abuse scandal. Maybe Cardinal Dulles can offer his colleagues in Rome some thoughtful advice next!

Frank O’Hara

Affirmation

The parish of St. Mary Church and Catholic Campus Ministry in Oxford, Ohio, includes Miami University. The city is small and the school large, so not surprisingly the majority of the catechumens and candidates in our adult initiation program are college students. Each week our R.C.I.A. session includes a “faith sharing” presentation, and while this is occasionally by an Oxford resident, most are made by students. As a former catechumen and now a member of the initiation team, I’ve heard many college students speak openly and comfortably about their faith. I can’t explain the experience recounted by John C. Haughey, S.J., (5/24) of students who “are not shy in talking about their moral convictions” but tend to be nonvocal about “a personal relationship with Jesus.” The students I have seen and heard have spoken with joy and conviction of their awareness of a close, personal relationship with our Lord. They are comfortable describing their awareness of God in their lives, relating how they turn to him in thanks and in need, and sharing the value of their prayer life. I don’t have an explanation for this difference. I only know how grateful I am for the affirmation these students so readily give.

Susan M. Frazier

Reasonable Reply

Your article Celebrating Good Liturgy, by Nathan D. Mitchell, (5/10) reminded me of a Mass I attended in Costa Rica years ago. During the Mass a barefoot man played My Old Kentucky Home on his violin. I thought it was a strange selection for a Mass.

My brother Neil, military attach at the U.S. Embassy, asked the violinist why he chose that song. He answered that he played that song better than any other song he knew and therefore was the one he wanted to play for God. The reply seemed reasonable to me.

Joseph N. Sweeney

Something Sacred

I want to thank Drew Christiansen, S.J., for his recent Memorial Day reflection (5/24) and to tell him how much his words and thoughts resonated with my eighth-grade students at The American School in London. Though few of our students here at the A.S.L. are British, we are guests in a country that still reveres Wilfred Owen and the soldier poets of World War I. Every one of my students knows Dulce et Decorum Est, and “the old Lie” is hardly lost on these 13-year-olds, whose perceptions of America have been shaken both by the events themselves and by the BBC’s reports of the war during the past year and a half. However, Father Christiansen’s frustration at being denied the right to honor those who have lost their lives during the Iraq war is something our eighth graders here can understand, perhaps in a slightly different way.

We have just returned from a weeklong excursion visiting the American, British and Canadian landing beaches at Normandy. We laid a wreath at St. Laurent Cemetery; each student placed a poppy (the flower still worn on many a lapel each Remembrance Day) on the grave of a soldier from his or her home state. Our Israeli students walked tentatively around the teutonic crosses marking the German soldiers’ graves at LeCambe Cemetery, and a few kids became emotional reading the poetic inscriptions and viewing all the flowers that adorn the graves at the British cemetery.

Many of these young people had never seen or visited a cemetery. Many do not believe in God, let alone the Resurrection. For some of our 132 eighth graders, this was the first time they had ever experienced something sacred: consecrated ground, hallowed by the thousands of young men just a few years older than themselves, who gave their lives so that we might live. This did sink in, and it is comforting to know that even as the number of World War II veterans is thinning, there are young people who are still moved by their stories and their sacrifices. Perhaps this is the “anthem for doomed youth” our students will carry with them.

Susan O’Connell

At the Bedside

In Must We Preserve Life? (4/19), Ronald Hamel and Michael Panicola present a forthright and cogent summation of the church’s traditional teaching on nutrition and hydration, drawing particular attention to the subtle, and now not-so-subtle, attempts of some to restrict this teaching narrowly during the last 20 years.

Must we preserve life? Each human life is sacred, given dignity by the Creator’s hand, and therefore always and everywhere to be preserved as unique and precious.

Central to this dignity, however, is the belief that the same Creator’s hand will raise up this mortal body to new and eternal life. Human life therefore is understood in the continuum of life here and life hereafter. This then becomes the primary context for our ethical analysis and the implications for care of the sick and dying.

There comes a time when the healing process ends and the dying process begins. Unfortunately there is no clear line of demarcation for this. But there iswith best medical judgment, in consultation with a team of holistic health care providers and with respect for the patient’s wishesa way of determining when this shift appears to be happening, and then of appropriately responding with care by either natural or artificial means.

Artificial nutrition support, whether by means of intravenous catheters or by feeding tubes into the gastrointestinal tract, is a medical therapy. The therapy has greatly evolved over the last 40 years and continues to evolve today. But make no mistake, the physical placement and maintenance of such devices, and the provision of refined nutrients, requires a high level of clinical skill in order to initiate this therapy safely and avoid harm to the patient. The choice of which approach is taken is based on the route of administration that will mostly like be assimilated, irrespective of the patient’s condition.

The decision to initiate and/or withdraw nutrition support is a difficult decision, but should be guided by prognosis. Patients with a prognosis for survival of less than three months, for example, might benefit from a nutrition support intervention that provides limited quantities of nutrients, with a principal emphasis on maintaining fluid and electrolyte (sodium, potassium, etc.) balance. For other patients with a somewhat longer or uncertain prognosis, but nonetheless an ultimate terminal outcome, the same approach may be considered. Alternatively, consideration may be given to complete nutritional support in this setting, when the shift from a healing to dying process is not certain. The decision to intervene is not diagnosis-specific, but rather prognosis-specific, and offered in a manner that preserves the dignity and comfort of the patient and significant others. Initiating nutrition support may occur prior to the final prognosis, but should not preclude its subsequent withdrawal.

Both of us, a clinical researcher and a chaplain, stand on the side of the bed holding not only the technology to assist in the healing or dying, but also the hand of the one we are helping in their healing or dying. Both of us are concerned with the physical and spiritual sustenance the person needs either to gain strength toward healing or to provide comfort in dying.

When we are in a healing process, nutrition and hydration can be physically administered in such a way as to strengthen the person toward recovery. Similarly, out of our sacramental tradition, we administer the Eucharist as food to strengthen the person and fortify him or her spiritually in the journey toward healing.

But when we are in the dying process, nutrition and hydration, whether administered artificially or in the normal course of attentive care, is offered in such a way as to bring comfort to the persona different kind of carein the last part of their journey. In like manner, we administer the Eucharist as the last sacrament, known as viaticumlikewise a different kind of care: food for the journey to the life hereafter.

Prior to the technological advances that have proved to be both benefit and burden, human beings in the home setting naturally followed the process of caring and being cared for, in being nurtured back to health or being nurtured through their dying. As history shows, there were always ethical concerns. But it seems there was a fundamental respect for the difference between the healing process and the dying process. Food and water were given and received in both instances, but always with careand with the appropriate means.

David F. Driscoll