Culled from the news this weekend....

Pope John Paul II has stunned Catholic health care providers, ethicists and theologians by announcing emphatically that it is "morally obligatory" to continue artificial feeding and hydration for people in a persistent vegetative state, even if they remain so for years.

The pope, in remarks last week that were released in English on Thursday, declared such support "basic care" and "not a medical act." He called removal "euthanasia by omission."

This is why religion, and people who try to impose their will on others on 'religious moral' grounds, fill me with utter disdain. Maybe the pope would think differently if we could induce such a state on him for a while.