Vatican loosens stance on food, water for patients in vegetative state

ROME – This week the Vatican’s Academy for Life issued a new text on a series of bioethical issues, including the provision of food and hydration for patients in a vegetative state, which marks a modest departure from the Vatican’s previously held position on the issue.

Published Thursday by the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), the volume is titled, “Small Lexicon on End of Life,” and covers a variety of bioethical issues.

According to an introduction by Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the PAV, the volume has the aim of “reducing at least that component of disagreement that depends on an imprecise use of the notions implied in speech.”

Namely, Paglia referred to “the statements that are sometimes attributed to believers and which are not rarely the result of cliches that have not been adequately scrutinized.

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After the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAFL) last month issued a booklet summarizing the Church’s teaching on a number of bioethical issues, the section on “artificial nutrition and hydration” (ANH) has some observers concerned about what they see as a departure from previous Church teaching.

The Pontifical Academy for Life was founded in 1994 by St. John Paul II to study and provide formation on bioethical issues for the promotion and defense of life. Published only in Italian on July 2, the PAFL’s new booklet says it has “the aim of clearing up confusion” about the Church’s teaching on a number of bioethical issues.

In the English-speaking world, however, the booklet has garnered scrutiny for appearing to soften the Church’s stance on the importance of providing food and water to patients in a vegetative state.

The Church’s teaching on this issue was recently in the news in the United States because of the ongoing case of Margo Naranjo, a disabled Texas woman whose parents, who are Catholic, announced last month that they had decided to allow Margo to die by starvation in hospice. They were prevented from doing so after a judge intervened.

What has the Church taught about withdrawing food and water?​

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