Bobby Schindler / LinkedIn
CV NEWS FEED // Bobby Schindler, brother of the late Terri Schiavo, is speaking out regarding the importance of Catholic teaching about caring for persons dependent on feeding tubes in light of a recent ethical situation involving a Catholic family and their disabled daughter.
Schindler’s July 29 op-ed for LifeNews addresses the story of Margo Naranjo, a woman who suffered serious brain damage from a car accident in 2020.
As CatholicVote previously reported, Margo’s parents Michael and Catherine have led public prayers for Margo’s healing almost every day since the accident.
This summer, Michael and Catherine announced that they intended to remove Margo’s artificial nutrition and hydration, which would effectively leave her to die of dehydration or starvation.
In July, they received a temporary restraining order prohibiting them from removing Margo’s food and water and have temporarily lost guardianship of her. According to court documents, Margo’s home health workers determined by way of a “yes” or “no” communication with Margo that she wanted to continue receiving food and water.
“If not for the courage of Margo’s care workers interceding,” Schindler wrote in the op-ed, “her parents would have removed Margo’s feeding tube, witnessing their daughter suffer a slow and inhumane death by starvation and dehydration.”
Schindler lost his own sister, Terri Schiavo, in 2005 after Terri’s estranged husband succeeded in a legal battle to have Schiavo’s feeding tube removed. Schindler is now a vocal advocate for ethical medical care and is President of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network.
In the op-ed, Schindler explained that feeding tubes were reclassified as “medical treatment” shortly after Daniel Callahan, an influential bioethicist, stated in the late 1980’s that “[denying] nutrition may become the only effective way to make certain that a large number of biologically tenacious patients actually die.”
The reclassification of feeding tubes from a basic necessity to “medical treatment” laid the groundwork for that which has caused vulnerable patients to die, Schindler explained.
“However… Catholic teaching has never changed: removing or denying a person’s feeding tube to impose death is a grave sin,” Schindler wrote. “But as in the case of Margo Naranjo and as was with my sister, Terri Schiavo, a misunderstanding of Church teaching regarding the removal of feeding tubes exists, causing widespread confusion, death, and sin.”
“It certainly does not help that Catholic leadership offers little instruction on this issue,” he wrote, sharing that at the time of his sister’s legal battle, her bishop at the time, Bishop Robert Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, authorized Fr. Gerard Murphy to testify that removing Schiavo’s feeding tube was in line with Catholic teaching.
“Bishop Lynch never corrected (nor condemned) the erroneous testimony of Fr. Murphy,” Schindler wrote, “bringing scandal to my sister’s situation as it pertains to Church teaching on this issue and other similar situations where it would be illicit to remove a person’s feeding tube.”
He noted that Pope St. John Paul II issued a teaching statement in March 2004 directly addressing Schiavo’s situation that “[clarified] Catholic teaching on the moral necessity of providing food and water as a simple requirement of ordinary care for those who are not dying and need only a feeding tube to live.”
However, some priests look to moral theologians and a 1957 statement from Pope Pius XII titled “Prolonging Life” to argue that if there is no hope of improving a patient’s health, then a feeding tube is not “ordinary care,” Schindler explained.
The National Catholic Bioethics Center highlights that a feeding tube is generally considered “ordinary care” unless it fails to provide nourishment to the patient; for example, if the patient’s body cannot absorb the nutrition due to a digestive cancer, then a feeding tube would be “disproportionate” or “extraordinary.”
Schindler highlighted in his op-ed that Catholics look to Church leaders to provide teaching and clarity especially when facing complex bioethical questions.
“The Catholic Church has extraordinary influence, and its faithful seek and deserve moral clarity—particularly regarding those who are targeted because of their brain injuries, physical disabilities, or elderly condition,” Schindler wrote. “We turn to our leaders for direction regarding unfamiliar or complex ethical healthcare situations and treatment choices on matters of life and death.”
In his conclusion, Schindler called for prayers that clergy will teach and follow medical ethics according to Church teaching, “and so that all may see the Shepherds of the Church faithfully guarding the flock of the Lord.”
“Without change,” he concluded, “thousands of Terris and Margos will remain targets for death, denied the unconditional love and compassion of God’s beloved children.”
