EDITORIAL
A TIME TO DIE As far as traditional moral theology is concerned, regardless of the court's decision, the answer to "what may be done?" with 21-year-old Karen Quinlan-who, as this is written,...
...Nor is it a broad policy that applies in the same way to all the twilight areas between full rational consciousness and death...
...Now, there are two Karen Quintans: the one whose narrowly defined "case" our theology can resolve...
...It is a practical moral decision which, like all human actions, retains its moral ambiguity...
...and the generalized Karen whose name and fate will be recalled in every hospital ward, in the unborn embryo struggling for life, in the just-bora mongoloid child, in the paralyzed old man...
...The line between an action taken to shorten a life and the act mercifully omitted lest death be unnecessarily prolonged becomes so thin as to practically disappear...
...It seems in contrast to the church's unyielding opposition to birth control, abortion, suicide and euthanasia...
...It is a balance of philosophy, logic, pastoral com-passion, common sense, casuistry, and a faith that looks beyond the perishing flesh to a life that continues with God...
...More significantly, the church's stand can seem to offset the increased modern sensitivity to the value of human life and the inviolability of the person, as well as our horror at Nazi genocide policies and our unwillingness to let any human agent decide who should live or die, or imply that some lives are more "valuable" than others...
...The respirator may, and probably should, be removed...
...We should acknowledge that the more casuistic elements of the church's ethical system are open to criticism, that moralists can rely on sometimes too deftly drawn distinctions to avoid admitting what the less tutored mind immediately perceives: that when we are so heavily involved in artificially regulating the being-born and dying processes of one another we become ultimately responsible for every step...
...She will and should be recalled in the courts, legislatures, universities and churches as we gradually and painfully begin to work out in a context broader than our own moral theology what we mean when we say perhaps too easily that each man has his time to die...
...To some observers accustomed to living with the mythical miracles of medical technology, it may seem that the church demands too little of its members when it comes to staying alive and that reason has been allowed to win out over moral value...
...But the church's position on Karen Quinlan, or on any dying person sustained by extraordinary means-means that are very painful, costly, or not really promoting a cure-is not a judgment on the value or "quality" of any particular life...
...with 21-year-old Karen Quinlan-who, as this is written, lingers in a coma, her life artificially sustained by a respirator-has been clear...
...and to the American cultural assumption that technology must be given its head-as if this new god had stolen the secret of life and death from the old God and now, with its own bag of miracles, holds our destinies in its steel and plastic hands...
...to the medical profession's position that the patient's body is to be kept going at all . costs...
...In fact, the now often-repeated consensus of Catholic moralists, which achieved its classic formulation in Pope Pius XII's address to a group of doctors in 1957, that biological life is a limited, relative value which we do not need to protect at all costs, today seems almost embarrassingly and paradoxically direct...
Vol. 102 • November 1975 • No. 18
