The Vatican statement on
baby Charlie Gard
VATICAN RADIO
June 29, 2017
The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life has issued a statement regarding the case of the terminally-ill English baby, Charlie Gard.
On Tuesday the European Court of Human Rights rejected a plea from the baby’s parents to be allowed to move him to the United States for experimental medical treatment. [They were able to raise enough money from sympathizers to afford seeking the experimental treatment in the US.]
10-month old Charlie was born with a rare genetic condition called mitochondrial depletion syndrome, which causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage.
He is being kept alive on a life support system, but Britain’s Supreme Court also ruled earlier in June that it was not in the baby’s interest to move him or continue treatment. Specialists at London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital believe Charlie has no chance of survival.
In a statement, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, says the interests of the patient must be paramount, but adds “
we must also accept the limits of medicine and […..] avoid aggressive medical procedures that are disproportionate to any expected results or excessively burdensome to the patient or the family. Paglia's full statement follows:
The matter of the English baby Charlie Gard and his parents has meant both pain and hope for all of us. We feel close to him, to his mother, his father, and all those who have cared for him and struggled together with him until now. For them, and for those who are called to decide their future, we raise to the Lord of Life our prayers, knowing that “in the Lord our labor will not be in vain.” (1 Cor. 15:58)
The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales issued a statement today that recognizes above all the complexity of the situation, the heartrending pain of the parents, and the efforts of so many to determine what is best for Charlie.
The Bishops’ statement also reaffirms that “we should never act with the deliberate intention to end a human life, including the removal of nutrition and hydration, so that death might be achieved” but that “we do, sometimes, however, have to recognize the limitations of what can be done, while always acting humanely in the service of the sick person until the time of natural death occurs.”
The proper question to be raised in this and in any other unfortunately similar case is this: What are the best interests of the patient? We must do what advances the health of the patient, but we must also accept the limits of medicine and, as stated in paragraph 65 of the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, avoid aggressive medical procedures that are disproportionate to any expected results or excessively burdensome to the patient or the family.
Likewise, the wishes of parents must heard and respected, but they too must be helped to understand the unique difficulty of their situation and not be left to face their painful decisions alone. If the relationship between doctor and patient (or parents as in Charlie’s case) is interfered with, everything becomes more difficult and legal action becomes a last resort, with the accompanying risk of ideological or political manipulation, which is always to be avoided, or of media sensationalism, which can be sadly superficial.
Dear Charlie, dear parents Chris Gard and Connie Yates, we are praying for you and with you.
✠ Vincenzo Paglia
President
Vatican City, June 28th 2017
Marco Tosatti's reaction on his blog is worth sharing:
After quoting liberally from Paglia's letter...
What I would have wanted
to hear from the Church
[Mons. Paglia's] words left me with a strange sensation. The first thing I thought of was that from now on, one must change the Academy's name to 'Pontifical Academy for Life, unless...'
And then I felt in my heart the things that I would have wanted to hear from a Catholic and pontifical academy. I would have wanted to hear, perhaps with a sense of overpowering pain,
- That in the face of the desire of the parents and the possibility they have to try and save their child, it is monstruous that the fate of the child should have to be decided by majority decision in a tribunal of legal experts.
- That however one looks at the court decision [and Mons. Paglia's agreement with it], it amounts to condemning the baby to death [sooner rather than later].
- That to accept it as a matter of fact that a tribunal can decide who lives and who dies, and how, is spine-chilling.
- That it would have been said - prophetically - that for whoever believes in love, faith and miracles, the Church stands alongside the parents even in a desperate battle.
- That to kill hope with the law is horrendous and opens the way to a future of grim and petty bureaucratic death sentences.
And I would have wanted to hear anguish and doubt whether it is right at all that tribunals and strangers should dispose of a baby's life even against the love of his parents.
And on this sad day of victory for bureaucrats, of pedantic bookish lawyers and of death, I would have wanted to hear some impulse of prophecy from the Church.
But apparently all the best intentions of 'the Church' today are already invested in immigrants and the goals of the United Nations.
And from Antonio Socci's Facebook page just now, a statement from Cardinal Carlo Caffarra:
Words from a true man of God
[while Bergoglio stays silent]
June 30, 2017
We have arrived at the terminal of the culture of death. Now it is public institutions, tribunals, who decide if a baby has the right to live or not. Even against the wish of the parents who wish to keep their child alive. We have touched the bottom point of barbarism.
Are we the children of institutions and do we owe our lives from them?Pity the West that has rejected God and his fatherhood and now finds itself dependent on bureaucracy! But Charlie's angel always sees the face of the Father.
STOP [THIS BARBARISM], IN THE NAME OF GOD! Let me remind you of Jesus's words [about crimes to children]: "It would be better for you to have a great millstone hung around your neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea."
- Cardinal Carlo Caffarra
June 30, 2017
I give up... The images uploaded through the Forum seem to disappear at random to be replaced by the image URL preceded by a little icon. Can someone please tell me what to do about this?... I am able to reload recent photos but not older ones, especially my catalog of staple images (logos, banners and the life), which are in photo files found in the hard drives of the successive computers I have used in the past several years, and to which access is not easy nor immediate.
The best I can do until I find an image hosting service that can retrieve my Photobucket images is to avoid posting images beyond the most essential.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/07/2017 01:58]