Last rights: mixed messages on end-of-life morality aren't good medicine for struggling families.

"DYING MUST BE LIKE FALLING ASLEEP AFTER MAKING love, tired, tranquil with that sense of wonder that pervades everything." So wrote 60-year-old Piergiorgio Welby in his online journal before his death in December from muscular dystrophy. Welby, an Italian, had been breathing with the assistance of a ventilator--against his expressed wishes--since 1997, after the disease he'd lived with since the age of 18 finally paralyzed nearly his entire body.

Despite such obvious insight about death, however, Welby was denied a Catholic funeral by the Diocese of Rome because he had "repeatedly and publicly" expressed "a wish to die." Pope Benedict, Welby's diocesan bishop, argued that life should be maintained "until its natural sunset." This despite the fact that Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan of the Pontifical Council for Health Care acknowledged that Welby's ventilator was a medical treatment that could be legitimately withdrawn if, as the Catechism puts it, it was "burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome."

Welby had indeed become an advocate for the right to refuse treatment, recently writing a book, Let Me Die (Rizzoli), in which he asked the Italian government for what he called "euthanasia." The questions he asked, however, echo those of many facing difficult decisions about end-of-life care: "What is natural about a body kept biologically functional with the help of artificial respirators, artificial feeding, artificial hydration, artificial intestinal emptying, of death artificially postponed?"

While church teaching forbids euthanasia--an "act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death," according to the Catechism--it also supports a patient's (or his or her legal agent's) freedom to refuse what the Catechism calls "overzealous" treatment, though it does not offer a list of what qualifies. Welby's case highlights the confusion created when the actions of some church leaders seem to contradict this already complicated moral teaching.

In this country the case of Terri Schiavo put that confusion in sharp relief. Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged woman who died in March 2005 after tubes providing nutrition and hydration were withdrawn, became a center of controversy when Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life began denouncing the withdrawal in the media. Pavone went so far as to accuse Schiavo's husband, who made the decision, of murder.

Few Catholic leaders pointed out that artificial nutrition and hydration had generally been considered treatments that could be withdrawn in extreme cases such as Schiavo's. But complicating matters further, Pope John Paul II had suggested in 2004 that such measures "should be considered in principle ordinary and proportionate" for those in Schiavo's condition, so long as they provide nourishment and alleviate suffering. Moral theologians continue to discuss how his statement should be interpreted, though beyond the hearing of most ordinary Catholics.

But, as these hard cases make clear, the parsing of "extraordinary" and "ordinary" care are not restricted to the ivory towers of moralists. Rather, they frame decisions that almost every family will eventually have to make. Unfortunately, denying a funeral to (and punishing the family of) a man who expressed the wish to discontinue a treatment that offered no hope of recovery will do far more to burden the consciences of those facing similar decisions than it will protect the terminally ill and disabled.

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT CATHOLIC TRADITION HAS MUCH TO teach our culture about the protection of human life. Part of that message is certainly that life's "quality" can't be defined by freedom from illness, pain, or disability. But the flip side is, and has always been, that a truly human life is more than biological functioning, that death is a natural part of life, and that one of life's tasks is preparing for its end. St. Francis knew this when he proclaimed death his "sister," and in more recent times Chicago's Cardinal Joseph Bernardin taught us to welcome death as a "friend" when our time comes.

As the technology of maintaining life at any cost races forward, now is not the time to abandon the wisdom of knowing when to let go. Our faith, after all, tells us that death, rather than an enemy to be fought to the bitter end, is the necessary path to fullness of life.

By BRYAN CONES, associate editor of U.S. CATHOLIC.