Hello and welcome back to the Thomistic Institute podcast.

My name is Father Gregory Pine, and we are joining you here for another installment of off-campus conversations.

Very delighted to be joined by Professor Gina Noia coming to us from Belmont Abbey College.

Thanks so much for joining us, Professor Noia.

Thanks for having me. Hey, hey, our joy. And by R, I don't know why I say R sometimes. It's kind of like a royal hour or I don't know, maybe I'm

joined in my room by someone else. Hard to say, but a mystic institute speaking through me says,

it's our joy. So in this particular episode, we're actually going to be following up on a lecture

that you gave at Johns Hopkins University to the chapter there headed up by Kayla Yuliano. Actually, I think she's been married since the last time I learned her name.

Maybe it's different than Juliano. So my apologies to Kayla, but kudos to Kayla for

leading that chapter in excellent fashion. But in that talk, you spoke to the nature of

end of life decision making or specifically about quality of life judgments.

So whenever we talk about anything bioethical, I think the layman feels a little bit overwhelmed by what seems like a technical competence that goes beyond his ordinary knowledge. And so people are like, yeah,

I hear about ordinary means. I hear about extraordinary means. I hear about quality of life. I hear

about sanctity of life. I don't know what any of these things means, so I don't feel like I can

enter the conversation. So maybe to start, would you just, yeah, kind of suss out the details or maybe just define some terms

so that we could get started so that we could, yeah, enter into the conversation.

Sure. I'll start with the ordinary versus extraordinary means distinction. So when we make this distinction, when the Catholic

tradition makes this distinction with regard to healthcare decision making, it's making a moral

distinction, not a medical distinction. So ordinary means, extraordinary means, means is referring to treatment. And so the question is,

the question being discerned is whether a treatment is going to be withheld or withdrawn.

If it's morally obligatory that the treatment be accepted, we call that ordinary means. If it's morally optional to accept the

treatment, in which case it could be withdrawn or withheld, we call that extraordinary means.

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