Being merciful to pets, but not to parents

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Rob’s Wife said:
Yes, there are ways to lessen the mental/emotional pain of some aspects of a suffering death. Pain meds, anti-depression drugs, hospice care, ect…
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In some cases, yes. But not necessarily for all of them.
 
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Hitetlen:
It may be both. The soldier may be suicidal for some reason, and connects it with saving his buddies. Which one takes precedence?
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A moral action who’s intent and purpose is to kill either oneself or an innocent person is intrinsically evil.

An instrincsically evil action is one that cannot be justified under any circumstances.

Therefore there is no “takes precdence”, the action is, by definition, morally evil.

But if the intent is to save lives, and the death of one’s self is undesired, then the Principle of Double Effect can apply.
 
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Hitetlen:
I am just interested in your gut feelings. Do you feel comfortable with condemning your parents and relatives to discomfort (sometimes even pain - horrible pain) lack of dignity while giving an easy way out to your pets.

Does this feel right to you? Do we treat our pets better than our parents?
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I know what you are struggling with because when we look at someone in pain, and that person is not uniting their pain and suffering with Jesus Christ, we do not see the inherent dignity of their life.

I love my pets (the people on this board know how much my Scotty, Roddy McDuff, meant to me and to my reconverstion, and how I still miss him two months after his death). However, as the stewards of lesser creatures, creatures whose suffering cannot aid in someone else’s redemption, it is our duty to ease their pain and suffering.

We do not treat our pets better than our parents or human loved ones when we do not help them kill themselves. Instead, we are honoring our human loved ones when we refuse to help them commit a mortal sin and, instead, help them to unite their sufferings with the sufferings of Christ.

And yes, I have been through the prolonged death of a loved one and the quick death of a loved one. I do speak from experience.
 
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Hitetlen:
I see. How about the persistent vegetative state? Almost no bodily functions, though some parts of the brain still might be operational, for example producing a heartbeat. The patient may even need a respiration-support, artificial kidneys, etc., and it is certain that he will never recover.
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The Catholic Church teaches that extraordinary means are not required to keep a person alive. For example, food and water are never considered extraordinary means.

A grabbed a quick quote from:
catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=598 to help communicate “extraordinary means”:
A person may, but is not bound to, use extraordinary means — those means which primarily are not considered ordinary care or common medical treatments. These means do not offer reasonable hope of benefit and may be excessively burdensome to either the patient or the family. Factors to consider in determining whether a treatment is extraordinary include the type of treatment, the degree of complexity, the amount of risk involved, its cost and accessibility, and the state of the sick person and his resources. One would weigh the proportion of pain and suffering against the amount of good to be done. Granted, in our world today, exactly what constitutes extraordinary medical care becomes harder and harder to define. For instance, accepting an artificial heart is clearly experimental and would be extraordinary, whereas the usage of a respirator or ventilator is oftentimes a standard procedure to aid the patient’s recovery.
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And I, for one, am always leery of those medical pronouncements :THIS PERSON SHALL NEVER RECOVER.

I am always reminded of other words of wisdom: “nothing is impossible with God”.
 
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