When is natural death?

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fish90

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I know that the Church does not mandate extraordinary means to preserve life. I do have some questions.
  1. When is natural death?
  2. Can a conscious terminally ill person refuse treatment or would they be sinning?
  3. Are only those who can live mandated to get treatment when there is sufficient resources available?
  4. If a person is in a condition where they cannot drink or feed themselves due to being unconscious, is the family mandated to give nutrition and hydration through a feeding tube?
  5. If an elderly patient is under hospice and is unable to feed or drink without a feeding tube, is the family mandated to give nutrition and hydration?
God Bless
 
fish90 said:
I know that the Church does not mandate extraordinary means to preserve life. I do have some questions.
  1. When is natural death?**The time when the body stops functioning. Natural death is a death not caused by the actions of another or by an accident. **
  2. Can a conscious terminally ill person refuse treatment or would they be sinning?Yes, when it comes to medical care, each person must use his/her judgement in deciding about treatment. Being terminally ill does not change that.
  3. Are only those who can live mandated to get treatment when there is sufficient resources available?I don’t understand the question.
  4. If a person is in a condition where they cannot drink or feed themselves due to being unconscious, is the family mandated to give nutrition and hydration through a feeding tube?If the person is terminally ill, there often comes a point where the body is not absorbing or getting any benefit from artificial hydration or nutrition. Otherwise, as long as the feeding tube is not harming the patient or causing other problems, food and water are considered normal (not extraordinary) care and should not be withheld.
  5. If an elderly patient is under hospice and is unable to feed or drink without a feeding tube, is the family mandated to give nutrition and hydration?Same as #4. Being elderly doesn’t change anything.
God Bless
Click to expand...
 
fish90 said:
I know that the Church does not mandate extraordinary means to preserve life. I do have some questions.
  1. When is natural death?
  2. Can a conscious terminally ill person refuse treatment or would they be sinning?
  3. Are only those who can live mandated to get treatment when there is sufficient resources available?
  4. If a person is in a condition where they cannot drink or feed themselves due to being unconscious, is the family mandated to give nutrition and hydration through a feeding tube?
  5. If an elderly patient is under hospice and is unable to feed or drink without a feeding tube, is the family mandated to give nutrition and hydration?
God Bless
Click to expand...
  1. What do you mean by this question? Death occurs…at death. Natural is when it’s not unnatural.
  2. Yes, a terminally ill person may licitly refuse treatment. Terminally ill, death is soon. Say for example, more chemotherapy is very intense, and may only serve to cause more pain.
  3. I’m not sure whether a person is mandated to receive treatment if it would be efficacious. Looking forward to discussion.
  4. Yes, nutrition and hydration are ordinary treatment. I just read your question in the AAA forum, and I’m not sure Father Serpa fully understood the scenario. If a person is ballooning from the IV, then they are no longer absorbing and metabolizing the fluid. Or they might just need a new IV, or a lower drip rate.
    If they are not absorbing the liquid, the IV can be stopped because the body is naturally shutting down.
  5. Yes, again nutrition and hydration are ordinary treatment and must be given.
One thing I’m not real sure about for 4 and 5 is whether the feeding tube itself is considered ordinary means. There may be a situation when the tube causes more harm, but I can’t think of one.
 
Do you really want someone to die of dehydration? Or starvation?
 
Do we have a natural death when somebody is killed, is poisened, malnutrited, committed suicide,… and so on?
Let think, pray and give a definition. Thanks: kallogjeri
 
kallogjeri said:
Do we have a natural death when somebody is killed, is poisened, malnutrited, committed suicide,… and so on?
Let think, pray and give a definition. Thanks: kallogjeri
Click to expand...
From what I know, those are all unnatural death. Natural death is from naturally acquired diseases and old age. So like if you get untreatable cancer, or a deadly flu, or anything else that no human intentionally gave you, it’s natural death.

As for detail explainations about this, I found ncbcenter.org/makingsense.asp to be very very useful. In particular, there is a link from Dec, 1, 2006 about feeding tubes.
 
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