Bishop Vasa's Statement on Terri Schiavo

Bishop Robert F. Vasa of Baker, OR, speaks out on behalf of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, the 39-year-old brain-disabled woman whose husband and legal guardian Michael Schiavo is determined to end her life by court-ordered starvation.

For Mary and Bob Schindler: ...."Cannot people see that Terri is their baby and that their love for her has a value and that their love tells the world that Terri has great worth? To treat her as if she were already dead is cruel and inhumane. To treat her as if she is dying is likewise ludicrous." Kindest Regards, +RFV

The Catholic Church teaches that hydration and nutrition are simply water and food. These must always be provided as long as the food or water itself or the method of delivery is not unduly burdensome to the PATIENT. There does not appear to be any indication from Terri that the provision or the method of provision of food and water is burdensome to her.

The one 'burden', which so many seem so determined to lift from her, is that one thing that allows Terri to continue to be a living breathing human person, life itself. Life itself cannot be the burden from which we in the Catholic Church seek to deliver the faithful. This is the Assisted Suicide attitude.

Life is a grace and a blessing and yes the living of that life does entail some burdens, sometimes great burdens, but the solution can be neither murder nor suicide — these are offenses against life itself and the Lord who gives it.

Terri is alive. She is kept alive by the same things that keep me alive - Food, water, air. Her disability deprives her of the ability to ingest these things, it does not deprive her of the ability to digest them. She may well die in the future from an inability to digest food but it would be murder to cause her death by denying her the food she still has the ability to digest and which continues to provide for her a definite benefit — life itself.

Kindest regards,

Bishop Robert F. Vasa
Diocese of Baker
Box 5999
Baker, Oregon 97708
(541) 388-4004

Also.
See Bishop Raymund Burke's statement here and Bishop Paul Loverde's re-statement of Church teaching here.