[soc.religion.christian] Living will

bralick@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Will Bralick) (03/04/90)

A question for any net.Catholics out there.  What is Catholic doctrine
vis-a-vis living wills, that is, is it suicide if one establishes a legal
document to withold artifical life-support medical care under some set
of enumerated conditions?  Since medical technology cannot detect when
one has transitioned into another state of being (i.e. when one's soul 
has left one's body), then it would be difficult to define legal physical 
death in accordance with that sort of criteria.

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

-- 
Will                             | If no set of moral ideas were truer or 
   bralick@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu    | better than any other, there would be no 
   bralick@gondor.cs.psu.edu     | sense in preferring civilised morality to 
with disclaimer; use disclaimer; | savage morality...    -- C.S. Lewis