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An Informed Conscience About Life-Sustaining Treatment And Care Is Important

“For God has called men and women, and still calls them, to attach themselves with all their being to Him in sharing forever a life that is divine and free from all decay. Christ won this victory when He rose to life, for by His death He freed men and women from death” (Gaudium et Spes 18).

My Conscience

• I, like every human person, have a conscience. This is the power to know right from wrong on a most basic level and to evaluate my actions with this knowledge. In my conscience I know what God expects from me. ³
  
• For example, by my conscience I can know that life should be cherished and cared for, or that people should act in justice, and then judge whether my actions toward my life and my neighbor are good or bad.
   
• So sacred is my conscience that I must always follow my conscience when I am as certain as I can be that I should do this or avoid that. These are the reasons why it is important that I act with a good conscience in decisions about life-sustaining treatment and care, and why this statement of my conscience must be respected and followed by my Health Care Agent.

Why the Catholic Church Gives Guidance to My Conscience

• In addition to always following my conscience, it is my responsibility to inform my conscience with accurate facts and the moral knowledge it needs so that I will make morally good decisions.
   
• In bringing Christ’s life and salvation to the world, the Catholic Church exists to help individuals live good lives and share more fully in the divine life of God. As part of this mission, Jesus Christ gave the Church the authority to teach the truth. It is by this authoritative teaching that the Church provides guidance for the formation of consciences. ⁴
   
• I am responsible for what I ought to know and what I choose, but this fact does not prevent the Church from helping me to know moral truths so that I may choose well and inherit the Kingdom of God.
   
• It is for these reasons why I look to the teaching of the Catholic Church to help me know what I should decide about life-sustaining treatment and care. It is important for these same reasons that my Health Care Agent understands how it is that I look to Catholic teaching for guidance.

³ See II Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (1965) [Online] (Available: http://www.vatican . va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_cons_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html ), n. 16; Catechism of the Catholic Church, ns. 1776–1802.

⁴ See Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1785 and II Vatican Council, Declaration on Religious Freedom (1965) [Online] (Available: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html ), n. 14.