The Supreme Court takes another step away from Church teaching
There is utter clarity about Catholic teaching on the withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration from a patient to bring about death: it constitutes an act of euthanasia.
Pope St John Paul II was uncompromising on this point. In an address in 2004 he told a conference on treating patients in a vegetative state that the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration, “if done knowingly and willingly” to end the life of a patient, represents “true and proper euthanasia by omission”.
