Pope John Paul II has stunned Catholic health care providers, ethicists and theologians by announcing emphatically that it is "morally obligatory" to continue artificial feeding and hydration for people in a persistent vegetative state, even if they remain so for years.

Stunned ethicists and theologians? What's new? Some people are stunned everytime moral truth is spoken by the Church.

Until now, the 565 hospitals in the Catholic Hospital Association (CHA) considered feeding tubes for people in a persistent vegetative state "medical treatment," which could be provided or discontinued, based on evaluating the benefits and burdens on patient and family.

Many public and private hospitals have taken this stance since 1990, when the Supreme Court ruled that feeding tubes are medical treatments "never intended to keep someone alive forever in an unconscious state," says attorney Bill Colby, who argued the case.

Of course, many have taken to following the laws of man rather than the laws of God. It's one of the reasons this country is in such a deplorable shape now. As God is removed from society, the society crumbles under its own weight of iniquity...

"I think we all would have withdrawn a feeding tube in her case — until this," says Laurence O'Connell, director of Park Ridge Center for Health, Faith and Ethics in Chicago. The pope's stance is "a stunner, to say the least."

This may be a place one would want to avoid...starvation and dehydration are, to them, perfectly acceptable forms of "dying with dignity"!

Pathetic, reprehensible, and sad! Link is here in USA Today.