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PAGE 2—November 6,1975
Quinlan Decision May Come In Few Days
BY VICTOR F. WINKLER
MORRISTOWN, N.J. (NC) - The
parents of 21-year-old Karen Ann
Quinlan may know in a few days
whether a court order will permit them
to tell doctors to disconnect the
mechanical respirator that has kept her
alive since April.
A five-day hearing ended Oct. 27 in a
state superior court here and Judge
Robert Muir Jr. said he would decide
the case in 10 to 14 days. Then the
question of appeals will be considered.
Joseph Quinlan, 50-year-old
supervisor with a pharmaceutical firm,
applied to Judge Muir for appointment
as legal guardian of his adoptive
daughter in order to authorize
discontinuance of the respirator at St.
Clare Hospital in nearby Denville, where
Karen has been in an unexplained coma
since April.
Medical experts testified that Miss
Quinlan is “legally and medically alive”
but will not recover from what they call
a “vegetative state.”
Quinlan said he reached his decision
after seeking the advice of his pastor,
Father Thomas Trapasso of Our Lady of
the Lake parish in Mt. Arlington, and
was satisfied that his desire to remove
the respirator was not morally wrong.
Quinlan said he believed it “the
Lord’s will” that Karen be allowed to
die and “pass into the hands of the
Lord.” He said he had decided in
August that there was no hope for her
recovery.
Father Trapasso testified he advised
the Quinlan’s of the Church’s position
that “extraordinary means” to sustain
life are not required.
“He had to make the decision,”
Father Trapasso said. He also told of
long talks with Quinlan’s wife, Julie, 48,
who had worked at the rectory and said
she made the decision much earlier than
her husband.
The Quinlans have been active in his
parish, Father Trapasso said. Quinlan
has been vice president of the parish
council and Mrs. Quinlan was president
of Rosary Society.
During the hearing, the physicians
who treated Miss Quinlan and
neurologists called by lawyers opposing
Pope Pius XII On Keeping A Patient Alive
Pope Pius XII
Many Church officials and moral theologians have appealed
to the teaching of Pope Pius XII in discussing the case of Karen
Ann Quinlan, the 21-year-old New Jersey girl who has been in a
coma six months and whose parents want to withdraw the
life-support system that has been keeping her alive.
Here are key excerpts from Pope Pius’ speech the moralists
have been citing. He gave it, in French, to an international
congress of anesthetists on Nov. 24, 1957, less than a year
before his own death.
The Pope was answering questions submitted to him by an
Austrian professor of anesthesiology.
Before examining the questions themselves, he laid down
what he called “the principles that allow formulation of the
answer.”
He said: “Natural reason and Christian morals say that man
(and whoever is entrusted with the task of taking care of his
fellowman) has the right and the duty in case of serious illness
to take the care necessary to preserve life and health. This duty,
which one has toward himself, toward God, toward the human
community, and in most cases toward certain determined
persons, derives from well-ordered charity, from submission to
the Creator, from social justice and even from strict justice, as
well as from respect toward one’s family.
“But normally one is held only to use ordinary means -
according to the circumstances of persons, places, times and
culture -- that is to say, means that do not involve any
extraordinary burden for oneself or for another. A more severe
obligation w s ould be too heavy for most men, and would render
too difficult the acquisition of higher goods that are more
important. Life, health, all temporal activity, are in fact
subordinate to spiritual ends. From another point of view, it is
not forbidden to do more than what is strictly necessary to
maintain life and health, as long as more serious duties are not
neglected.”
After speaking of the administration of the sacraments to
unconscious persons, Pope Pius XII continued:
“It is up to the doctor, and in particular to the anesthetist, to
give a clear and precise definition of ‘death’ and the ‘moment of
death’ of a patient who dies in a state of unconsciousness.”
Pope Pius passed on to the solution of the particular
questions that had been put to him.
“Does the anesthetist have the right, or is he even bound in all
cases of deep unconsciousness, even in those that in the
judgment of a competent physician are completely without
hope, to utilize modern apparatuses of artificial respiration,
even against the will of the family?
“In ordinary cases, it will be conceded that the anesthetist
has the right so to act, but he does not have the obligation to do
so, unless this is the only way of satisfying another moral duty
that is certain. The physician’s rights and duties are correlative
to those of the patient. The physican in fact has no separate or
independent right where the patient is concerned. In general he
can act only if the patient authorizes him explicitly or implicitly
(directly or indirectly).
“The technique of resuscitation, which concerns us here, does
not contain in itself anything immoral; so the patient - if he was
capable of a personal decision - could licitly utilize it and
consequently authorize it to the physician. From another point
of view, since these forms of treatment go beyond ordinary
means, to which one is obliged to resort, it cannot be held
obligatory to employ them or, consequently, to authorize the
physician to employ them.
“The rights and duties of the family, in general, depend on
the presumed will of the unconscious patient, if the patient is of
age and with the legal capacity to act on his or her own behalf.
As for the proper and independent duty of the family, it usually
obliges only to the employment of ordinary means.
“Consequently, if it appears that the attempt at resuscitation
really constitutes such a burden that it cannot in conscience be
imposed upon it, the family may licitly insist that the physician
interrupt his attempts, and the physician may licitly comply.
“There is not in this case any direct disposal of the patient’s
life, or of euthanasia, which would never be allowable. Even
when it entails the halt of circulation of the blood, the
interruption of attempts at resuscitation is never more than an
indirect cause of the cessation of life, and in this case the
principle of double effect and the principle of ‘voluntarium rn
causa.’”
Pope Pius observed that the second question - may the
doctor remove the artificial respiration apparatus before the
blood circulation has come to a complete stop? - had already
been answered.
He moved to the third: “When the blood circulation and the
life of a patient who is deeply unconscious because of a central
paralysis are maintained only through artificial respiration, and
no improvement is noted after a few days, at what time does the
Catholic Church consider the patient ‘dead’. . .?”
He said: “Where the verification of the fact in particular cases
is concerned, the answer cannot be deduced from any religious
and moral principle and, under this aspect, does not fall within
the competence of the Church. But considerations of a general
order permit the belief that human life continues as long as its
vital functions - as distinct from the simple life of the organs -
manifest themselves spontaneously or even with the aid of
artificial processes. A good number of these cases are the object
of insoluble doubt, and must be dealt with according to the
presumptions of right and wrong ...”
SRO Crowd Gathers For Mother Teresa
WASHINGTON (NC) - A standing-room-only crowd
thronged the vast National Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception here Oct. 26 to honor Mother Teresa, the
Albanian-born nun who has inspired the hearts of millions
through her ministry to the sick and dying among India’s
“poorest of the poor.”
Mother Teresa’s Calcutta-based Missionaries of Charity, which
now number more than 1,100 Sisters, is 25 years old this year.
In remarks following Mass at the shrine, the tiny nun, clad in
the blue-bordered white Indian sari that is the official garb of
her Religious community, told her audience that she regards her
work among the poor as a form of direct service to Christ
In Jesus, she said, God “made himself the hungry one, the
naked one, the homeless one, the sick one . . .so that you and I
might have the joy of feeling wanted . . .
“That Jesus, that Jesus hungry for love and bread . . .that
Jesus is today around the world everywhere, even here in the
United States, looking up at you and me and asking, ‘Will you
help me?’ ”
Mother Teresa was introduced by Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle,
retired archbishop of Washington, who first knew of her work in
the 1940s when he directed what subsequently became Catholic
Relief Services, the overseas aid agency of American Catholics.
He described the Sister - who at that time had been in India
20 years as a teacher - and some of her former students picking
Press Vocation Called
Most Important
MOBILE, Ala. (NC) - The vocation of the Catholic press is
“probably the most important in the Church today” because it
is “the vocation of bridge that helps both so-called liberals and
so-called conservatives to realize the unity of their Christian
faith,” a theology professor said here.
Jesuit Father H. James Yamauchi, professor of theology at
Spring Hill College in Mobile, told delegates to the southern
regional conference of the Catholic Press Association (CPA):
“Your job is to keep the faithful aware of what’s going on. You
must prepare the faithful for future changes.
“We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg as far as changes in
the Church,” he said. “More dramatic changes will come.”
Father Yamauchi told the delegates that Catholics were not
prepared for the changes that occurred after the Second Vatican
Council. “The Catholic press must be aware and ask themselves
if you are really preparing the faithful for what is now
happening to them,” he said.
“Your task is to keep the faithful informed that something is
going on. You must report events accurately and responsibly so
new developments won’t crash in and disturb people’s faith.”
up Calcutta’s dying from the streets and taking them by
wheelbarrow to a hostel where at least they could be given a
dignified death.
The care of the dying poor continues to be a central feature
of the work of the Missionaries of Charity, a point that was
made doubly significant by Mother Teresa’s private meeting
earlier in the day with Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the nation’s
most eminent scientific expert on death and dying.
Eileen Egan of Catholic Relief Services, who sat in on the
encounter, the first meeting between the two women, said that
the two agreed that although they had started from different
points, their experiences had led them to very similar
understandings of death and dying.
Both women are convinced, she said, that the greatest
suffering for virtually all dying people comes not from the pangs
of their disease but from the feeling that they are rejected by
the living.
Both women feel that personal love and care by cheerful
helpers is indispensable for the ill and dying, she said. In Mother
Teresa’s words, “a long-faced person is no one to be around the
dying.”
Dr. Kubler-Ross told Mother Teresa she is now trying to start
hospices around the country for the dying much like Mother
Teresa’s hostels, in order to spare patients the experience of
dying uncomforted in hospitals. The physician said she tries to
get all mortally ill people out of the hospital, preferably to die
at home.
Accompanying Mother Teresa to her appearance at the shrine
were half a dozen of her Sisters, most of them Indians, who
have begun to work among poor people in New York’s Harlem.
They represent the first outpost of the Missionaries of Charity
in the United States.
Elsewhere in the world, though, the Sisters have gone far
beyond their first tentative beginnings in Calcutta. They are
now at work in 60 cities in India, as well as Tanzania, in
Mauritius, in Australia, England, Italy, Peru and Venezuela.
Cardinal O’Boyle presented Mother Teresa with a check for
$10,000. The money represented contributions received by the
shrine in recent months at the display of Pope Paul’s gold and
silver coronation tiara, which has been on exhibit since the
Pontiff gave it away on behalf of the world’s poor.
The shrine’s governing authorities decided more than a year
ago that all of the tiara donations would be turned over to the
work of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.
In addition to the money gift, Bishop James S. Rausch,
general secretary of the U.S. Catholic Conference and principal
celebrant at the Mass, also presented Mother Teresa with the
shrine’s International Women’s Year Award.
As she concluded her brief talk after the Mass Mother Teresa
urged her listeners to be ever alert to the needs of those around
them.
“Knowledge,” she said, “always leads to love, and love to
service.”
Mother Teresa
her father’s request testified that
removing the respirator would violate
current medical practice. One said
however, that extraordinary means are
acceptable only when there is a chance
of recovery.
Much of the case had to do with
testimony that Karen herself had on
occasions expressed a desire not to be
kept alive by artificial means if such a
situation arose. Mrs. Quinlan; her
19-year-old daughter, Mary Ellen; and a
friend, Lori Gaffney, all said they had
such conversations with Karen during
the past three years - once at the death
of an aunt and again when two family
friends died, all of lingering illnesses.
Judge Muir allowed the testimony
over objections that it was hearsay and
inadmissible.
The Quinlans also insisted that
doctors at first had agreed to turn off
the respirator and then later refused.
The doctors - Robert Morse, a
neurologist, and Arshad Javed, a
pulmonary expert who assisted in the
case - denied this.
The six lawyers in the case took
slightly more than two hours to deliver
their oral summations. During the
hearing, which has received worldwide
attention, Judge Muir’s courtroom
maintained a classroom-like atmosphere.
Strict security was enforced and no one
was allowed to enter or leave during
each court session.
Two thirds of the seats in the early
19-century courthouse were reserved for
the press and only handfuls of
spectators sought to be admitted.
The hospital’s attorney Theodore
Einhorn said in his summation that
granting the Quinlan’s request would, in
effect, put the court in the position of
practicing medicine. He said it would
also “allow the government to
determine who shall live and who shall
die.”
Ralph Porzio, lawyer for the doctors,
referred to the possibility of recovery
and said “if she has one chance in a
million, who are we and by what right
do we kill that chance?”
Morris County prosecutor Donald G.
Collester Jr. asserted that “preservation
of life is paramount” and added “the
greater peril lies in disregarding the
sanctity of life.”
New Jersey Attorney General William
Hyland also said he saw a “grave risk of
criminality” and said he would call for
legislative study of “the issues with
which we’ve been confronted.”
Miss Quinlan’s temporary guardian,
Daniel Coburn, compared the petition
to “religious euthanasia” and said
criteria for determining death belong to
the legislature.
The Quinlans’ lawyer, Paul
Armstrong, 30-year-old Notre Dame
graduate, was the last to address the
court. He pictured Quinlan as “a loving
father, interested only in the welfare of
his family, who will abide by any
judgment the law will render.” He
insisted that failure to grant the request
would violate Miss Quinlan’s
constitutional rights under the First and
Eighth Amendments.
The First Amendment forbids
Congress to make laws establishing
religion or prohibiting its free exercise.
The Eighth forbids “cruel and unusual
punishment.”
His opponents had disagreed. One
contended “the protection of the First
Amendment extends to beliefs, not
practices.”
Spectators during the hearing
included a self-styled faith healer and
21-year-old Guy Treadway of Hamilton
Township, N.J., who said he recovered
after 28 days in a coma following an
auto accident and was sure Karen would
too.
Since the case was started, more than
1,000 cards and letters have been
received by the Quinlans from as far as
England, Japan and the Philippines. The
mail is about two to one in their favor.
PAPAL PRAISE
World Missionary Bishops Are ‘Front-Line Soldiers’
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul VI addressing missionary
bishops likened them to front-line soldiers of the Church.
In a private audience Oct. 20, the day after Mission Sunday,
the Pope said: “Every bishop is by definition missionary.” Each
bishop is called and destined to assume an evangelical mission,
he said. Yet if you add the word “missionary” that is “not a
redundancy because it means something more,” he continued.
“A missionary bishop means a bishop who is in the missions,
that is a pastor who is in the front line, to form and welcome
and give pasture to the People of God,” he said.
The difficulties of the missionary bishop’s duties were well
known, said the Pope, but the torch was ever handed on from
old to young.
“If, because of advanced age or from ill health or other
impediment, you have had to leave your post in the mission the
high designation of ‘missionary bishop’ continues forever as a
distinction. You are ever blessed, in the local and in the
universal Church, for what you have done to spread the
kingdom of God.
“Other bishops, younger and, often, sons of the growing
Christian community, have come under you into the ministerial
work; you have handed them the torch of evangelical light
which you had lit and which illuminated all.”
The bishops had come to Rome for the beatification on
Mission Sunday of four missioners.