End-of-life teaching more than 'dilemmas, controversies,' priest says

Published: 2007-03-02

CHICAGO (CNS) -- Church teaching on end-of-life issues is much more than "dilemmas and controversies," a priest-physician told a gathering of Catholic health care ethicists in Chicago March 1. "Don't let people hijack our church anymore," said Jesuit Father Myles N. Sheehan, a geriatric oncologist who is senior associate dean for educational programs at the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University Chicago. "Let's pay attention to church teaching and not to what someone reads in this liberal magazine or that conservative magazine," he added, noting that the 46-page "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services" is "a three-line document to the rest of the world." Too often, church teaching is reduced to "feeding tube in or out? Ventilator on or off?" he said. But an obsession with the controversies "makes us forget our areas of broad agreement." Father Sheehan spoke on the second day of a three-day conference on "Catholic Health Care Ethics: The Tradition and Contemporary Culture," sponsored by the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at Loyola's medical school and by the Catholic Health Association.

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