The Vatican has spoken out against the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, claiming that feeding tubes don't qualify as "extraordinary" care and, hence, it's not licit to remove them. What's curious about this is that it appears to represent a bit of a shift in policy.

Bad Catholic quotes from Commonweal:

The church has long emphasized the difference between allowing to die and killing: the need to provide ordinary, rather than extraordinary, means for keeping terminally ill patients alive. Those opposed to removing Schiavo’s feeding tube argue that to do so is to starve her to death, in fact to cause her death. That is not how the Catholic tradition has parsed this difficult moral dilemma. Rather, Catholic tradition recognizes that Schiavo’s underlying condition, her inability to ingest food and water, should be understood to be the cause of her death. To insist that Schiavo be kept alive indefinitely because technology enables us to do so is to embrace vitalism; it is to elevate mere physical existence over all other values. The questions Schiavo’s guardians must answer are, What benefit will she gain, and what burdens is she being subjected to, in being kept alive in her condition? Is the preservation of the life of someone in a permanent vegetative state actually a benefit to that person? Is it a just allocation of limited resources? Traditionally, Catholicism has answered no. Nothing in Schiavo’s case presents a persuasive reason for thinking that teaching is erroneous.

Pope John Paul II has argued that giving food is not "invasive" or "extraordinary." Instead, it's the minimum sort of thing that's necessary for life. Isn't the same true about air, though? Of course it is — but breathing tubes do, apparently, qualify as "extraordinary" and can be removed.

Then there's the fact that if inserting a feeding tube into someone's gut isn't "invasive," then I'm not quite sure how anything can qualify.

It seems to me that the Vatican's position these things still hasn't been worked out into something solid and coherent.

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• Roman Catholicism
• Roman Catholicism News
• Terri Schiavo: News & Issues