Bob Egelko writing in this morning's SF Comical discusses a relatively new directive issued by the Catholic bishops of the US:

The nation's Catholic hospitals, including three in the Bay Area, face a new religious mandate in the new year: to provide life-sustaining food, water and medicine to comatose patients who have no hope of recovery.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the directive Nov. 17 to the more than 1,000 church-affiliated hospitals and nursing homes in the United States and to all Catholic doctors and nurses. Invoking a 2004 speech by Pope John Paul II, the bishops said Catholics must provide nutritional assistance to patients with "presumably irreversible conditions ... who can reasonably be expected to live indefinitely if given such care.

Because providing food and water through a rubber tube inserted through the nose "always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act."

At the same news conference Wonks Anonymous has learned that they also announced the beatification of little Johnny Vegamatic, virgin and martyr, who recently passed on to the Lord after forty years in a coma. Johnny jumped in front of a car entering a Planned Parenthood parking lot during the heat of a Right to Life demonstration and received a severe knock on the head. After the incident he became a model comatose patient, indicating his desire to continue life by any means through various eye movements and fits of spasmodic coughing,

During his remaining life Johnny had four major surgeries and finally passed away of an antibiotic resistant infection. He should serve as an example to us all of how to treasure the gift of life.