Ten-month-old Charlie Gard will die later today, and the one institution that should speak for him seems to be more concerned about toeing the politically correct line.
The Catholic Church should be one of the most pro-life voices out there -- which is why Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia's statement on the terminally-ill child set to be disconnected from his feeding tube is so disturbing.
The Italian archbishop, who is president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, issued this statement to Vatican Radio on Charlie Gard after the European Court of Human Rights denied his parents' last appeal to move Charlie to the United States for experimental treatment:
"The interests of the patient must be paramount, but 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."
This should be an odd wish-washy statement to anyone who has followed the Charlie Gard saga. Little Charlie was born with a rare degenerative disease and has been living in the intensive care unit at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London for most of his short life.
Doctors at the hospital say there is nothing more they can do for him and that they should remove Charlie's feeding tubes and ventilator. His parents disagree, and have even raised £1.3 million (about $2 million) to take him to the United States for treatment with a leading expert that has worked with children with similar conditions.
But courts in the U.K. and the EU have decided that the doctors are right, and Charlie must die.
This is not a a situation of "disproportionate" medical procedures, like the archbishop claims. According to his parents, Charlie is stable and they are willing to foot the bill for one last try to save his life. Charlie's father said it best.
"We are not asking to take our son to some crackpot doctor," said Chris Gard in a TV interview. "We are asking to take our son to a world renowned hospital with the world's leading expert in these conditions."
As far as the "interests of the patient" go, Charlie's interest is to live. Government officials in the U.K. have decided that Charlie's life is not worth living because even if the treatment saves him, he will still have brain damage. Contrarily, it has always been the Church's position that every life is worth living, not just the perfectly-abled.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
"...An act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator."
Catholics on Twitter agree:
The Church's teaching on this issue seems pretty cut-and-dry to me. Charlie's life isn't valuable because some judge from the EU says it is, but because God created him. This should be the Vatican's first and foremost position.
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