Schiavo redux

Obviously, Commonweal's response to my letter on the Terri Schiavo case ("Correspondence," December 5, 2003) is not the work of your editor. The jargon and the reasoning tell me that it is the work of a theologian.

I did not misrepresent the Catholic Church's teaching on nutrition and hydration in the Schiavo case. Your theological consult has his own agenda. He identifies the meaning of Catholic tradition with mainstream Catholic theology. This is wrong. I agree that Richard McCormick, SJ, and John F. Kavanaugh, SJ, represent mainstream Catholic theology, but they are not Catholic tradition. The popes and the bishops represent Catholic tradition.

If your theological consult had bothered to research the church's sources on nutrition and hydration--such as the pope's October 2, 1998 Ad Limina address to the bishops of California, Nevada, and Hawaii; the 1992 statement of the U.S. bishops' prolife committee, Nutrition and Hydration: Moral and Pastoral Considerations; or the 2001 Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services by the U.S. Catholic bishops--he would have found that the "presumption should be in favor of providing medically assisted nutrition and hydration to all patients who need them." Contrary to what your consult implies in his response, I am not a vitalist, a reductionist, or a physicalist. I do not value life as an absolute, but I do value it in whatever form it is found as sacred and inviolable. Incidentally, so does the Catholic Church.

PATRICK J. BOYLE, SJ

Mundelein, Ill.

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