BECAUSE WE CAN

Everybody and his brother and his sister, it seems, has a take on the Terry Schiavo case. This is good. My email inbox has been filled with articles, op-ed pieces, and individual thoughts about what is/was the right thing to do not only in Terry’s situation but in all such situations. Life-and-death issues are addressed every day in our major hospitals without all the hoopla and fanfare, thank God; for that is where they should be addressed. If politicians want to weigh in on the matter, maybe they should, but it may be a very slippery slope they step onto.

   There are truly very real moral and ethical dimensions to the Schiavo situation. But there is one dimension that seems to be overlooked in all the posturing and preening and positioning that is going on. This would not have been an issue not too long ago. The reason why there is a debate over whether or not to keep Terry alive is that we can. We have the ability, the machinery, the know-how to keep her hydrated and fed.

   However, just because we can do something does not inherently mean that we should. There is a theological principle that states we must employ ordinary means to keep someone alive but we do not have to use extraordinary means. To apply this principle to Terry means that the tube should never have been removed. If that is the issue at hand, then those who removed the tube and those who ruled it was legal to do so erred.

   But is that, was that, the real issue? I don’t think so. The real issue is the “because we can” issue. Because we now can do something, because we can transplant organs, keep new-borns alive, transfer stem cells, keep Terry alive – and the list is getting longer and longer each day – should we? Even more, do we now have a right to such procedures simply because we can perform them even given the often exorbitant costs involved?

   When does the extraordinary become ordinary? When we can do it? When it is cost-effective? When success is probable? When? Then we add to this the “quality of life” issue. No one will claim that there is any quality to Terry’s life. But I have known quit a few parishioners, alive and well and eating and breathing on their own, who wanted to die because they found no quality to their lives. They were merely existing day to day and falling off to sleep each night praying to God to take them home before morning.  

   When we cannot do something, the issue is moot; but it is also an excellent time to debate and discuss it. We should have had the “Terry Schiavo Case” issue discussed thirty or forty years ago as a “when and if” issue. We did not. Now we are ruing that failing. The church and society have failed. We have failed. We now grope for answers to questions we should have asked before they became questions. We now must deal with real issues, not in some ideal, quiet setting, but before judge, jury, and the prying eyes and endless questions of the media. And it’s our own fault.

   I am sorry for Terry and her family. They have all had to endure too much and needlessly so if we had done our work a long time ago. But if Terry’s case finally forces us to get to the heart of the matter, then her family’s suffering and pain will not have be in vain.

   There are many questions now to be asked, perhaps beginning with “When does ‘because we can’ become a ‘must’”? Even more, who ultimately decides? Who decides who ultimately decides? Those are just for starters. For Terry’s sake, let us begin.                             WJP