!!!!

Over on the blog, Truth and Charity Forum, Joe Kral has written a post that contains only a little bit of truth and even less charity.  He picks up on a term coined by John Breck, vitalism, and creates a ‘straw man’ that he attacks viciously.  According to Breck vitalism is a belief that holds that biological life should be sustained at all costs and by any means available.  I call this a ‘straw man‘ because it is not the position held by genuinely orthodox Catholic moralists.

What is really involved in this dispute is that Kral and his sponsors approach end-of-life issues from the perspective of the health care industry while the rest of us approach end-of-life care issues from the perspective of the patient’s rights, above all the patient’s right to life and the avoidance,  through the use of ordinary medical care, of passive euthanasia.  Passive euthanasia occurs when medical care is withheld or death is hastened by excessive use of pain killer drugs.

The health care industry is concerned realistically about money.  Health care costs a lot of money.  The health care industry earns a lot of money for its administrators, doctors and all the other members of its staff.  Money seems to rule the world, but in the world of morality as taught by the Church money does not rule, human rights rule.

The health care industry increasingly seems to want to hasten the death of critically ill patients so that their organs can be harvested and supplied to the billion dollar organ transplant industry, a subsidiary of the health care industry.  We who oppose hastening the death of the patient by means of passive euthanasia, the so-called Third Path, oppose it because the patient has the right to reasonable care and if it cannot be found in one hospital or institution the patient has the right to a second opinion and/or treatment at another hospital or institution.

Kral’s post is probably the opening shot being fired by the proponents of the Third Path in preparation for the next session of the Texas Legislature that begins on January 13, 2015.  We are ready.