Living justly

People pray in support of keeping Terri Schiavo alive during a protest in this March 18, 2005, file photo. (CNS/Reuters)

WASHINGTON -- A proposed revision to the directives that guide Catholic heath care facilities would clarify that patients with chronic conditions who are not imminently dying should receive food and water by "medically assisted" means if they cannot take them normally.

"As a general rule, there is an obligation to provide patients with food and water, including medically assisted nutrition and hydration for those who cannot take food orally," says the revised text of the "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services" proposed by the U.S. bishops' Committee on Doctrine.

"This obligation extends to patients in chronic conditions (e.g., the 'persistent vegetative state') who can reasonably be expected to live indefinitely if given such care," the new text adds.

Deleted from the directives would be a reference to "the necessary distinctions between questions already resolved by the magisterium and those requiring further reflection, as, for example, the morality of withdrawing medically assisted hydration and nutrition from a person who is in the condition that is recognized by physicians as the 'persistent vegetative state.'"

First lady Michelle Obama and some 36 fifth-grade students harvest vegetables in the White House Kitchen Garden in Washington June 16. (AFP/Jewel Samad)

At the meeting of the G-20 in Pittsburgh last month, first lady Michelle Obama invited spouses of the world’s economic leaders to a dinner at Rosemont Farm in Fox Chapel, Pa. Owned by Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Sen. John Kerry, the farm produces and raises chickens and cows. Salad greens and apples from the farm were also on the menu in addition to the farm’s sustainably raised meat.

In a photo that is part of a traveling exhibit to raise awareness about poverty in the United States, a minister in Chicago’s South Side is moved to tears by the troubles in his impoverished neighborhood. (Steve Liss/AmericanPoverty.org)

PORTLAND, ORE. -- Facing a poverty crisis “at levels we haven’t seen since the 1930s,” Catholic Charities USA president Fr. Larry Snyder welcomed 450 Catholic Charities leaders to their annual national meeting Sept. 24-26 in Portland.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor talks with Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl following the 56th annual Red Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington Oct. 4.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court opened its 2009 term Oct. 5 with a new justice and cases dealing with at least one religious rights issue -- about a cross on a war memorial in a federal preserve -- and other cases about the circumstances leading to deportation, about an immigrant in detention being denied medical care and several dealing with the sentencing of convicted criminals.