Kentucky Right to Life holds state conference

Father Tad Pacholczyk
Father Tad Pacholczyk

By Jessica Able, Record Staff Writer

About 100 people attended the Kentucky Right to Life Association’s (KRLA) state conference Nov. 14, where they heard from a nureoscientist — who’s also a priest — about end-of-life decision making.

Opening the day, Margie Montgomery, executive director of KRLA, said those gathered for the conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 830 Phillips Lane, should be proud to be pro-life because “we have the truth on our side.”

“This is a day to begin our combat in greater earnest than before,” Montgomery said in her welcoming remarks.

The priest, Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, the director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, gave the day’s keynote address: “End of Life Decision Making With Dignity.”

Father Pacholczyk, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience from Yale University and is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., began his address by noting that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops provides an informative overview of Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services, which can be found at usccb.org.

In the document, the bishops write that “we are not the owners of our lives and, hence, do not have absolute power over life.”

The bishops go on to say that “we have a duty to preserve our life … but the duty to preserve life is not absolute, for we may reject life-prolonging procedures that are insufficiently beneficial or excessively burdensome” he noted.

Father Pacholczyk said “benefit” and “burden” were the two key words.

“When the burden gets really high and the benefits are few, then we don’t have to utilize those means,” he said.

It’s difficult to know, Father Pacholczyk said, when it’s reasonable to refuse or discontinue life-sustaining treatments.

About 100 people, including the women above, attended the Kentucky Right to Life Association's state conference Nov. 14 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Louisville.
About 100 people, including the women above, attended the Kentucky Right to Life Association’s state conference Nov. 14 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Louisville.

He suggested that God does not leave people in a vacuum. If Catholics do their “due diligence” and seek out experts and pray on the matter, he said, God will provide guidance so “that the gray (area) shrinks and comes down to a line and we are able to discern what is right and what is wrong.”

Father Pacholczyk said the bishops provide some guidance as well on the moral obligation of using ordinary and extraordinary means.

The bishops write that “a person has a moral obligation to use ordinary or proportionate means of preserving his or her life.”

“If something is proportionate, it is required,” he said. “This is what you have to do to be a good steward, to take care of yourself, to act responsibly.”

Meanwhile, if something is “extraordinary or disproportionate,” he said, the choice is optional.

He said that while these decisions and judgments are difficult for patients and families, they can serve as “an invitation to a journey.”

“It is a journey partly of discernment … but it’s also an opportunity for us to be changed and transformed by various graces as the person is dying,” he said.

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