(RNS) At a residential hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., the life of a 41-year-old Catholic woman hung in the balance as supporters mounted an unsuccessful bid to shield her from "the culture of death."

At the same day on the other side of the world, a Catholic man twice her age also clung to life, battling a high fever and urinary tract infection, similarly unable to speak or eat, as supporters rallied to his side and proclaimed him an icon of "the culture of life."

Terri Schiavo had been removed from her life-sustaining feeding tube; Pope John Paul II was connected to his. While her fate was determined by the courts, his seems securely in the hands of God. Observers say the contrast offers a "teachable moment" for the church to demonstrate its belief in the wrong way to die, the right way to live.

Schiavo died March 31, nearly two weeks after a feeding tube was removed under court order and 15 years of living in what doctors called a "persistent vegetative state."

In Rome, doctors inserted a feeding tube through the pope's nose to help sustain the 84-year-old pontiff as he battled Parkinson's disease and a host of other ailments.

To be sure, both Schiavo's family and John Paul himself had to confront different medical and ethical questions on the end of life. Schiavo was otherwise healthy, while the pope had been in declining health for years. Schiavo's final wishes were disputed, while the pope's appeared ironclad. And where Schiavo's case ended in court, John Paul's April 2 death didn't become a legal - or political - football.

Yet, for all their differences, both have emerged as public icons of suffering, polar opposites in how society responds to the feeble and frail. If Schiavo's death prompted the questions, supporters say the pope's will provide the answers.

 

Winning the war

If the "culture of life" lost the battle over Schiavo, they say the pope will ultimately help win the war.

"I think it's a teachable moment, but the most effective teaching was done by the pope through his witness, his example," said Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the pro-life office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Doerflinger, like many Catholic bishops, said Schiavo fell victim to an "entire mentality that dismisses life - especially at its very beginning, its very end and its most disabled stages - as valueless."

Here in the United States, much of that battle will likely be played out as Congress mulls new laws to prevent another Schiavo episode, and later this year as the U.S. Supreme Court hears a challenge to Oregon's assisted suicide law.

Both sides in the debate - those who advocate for life in all cases, and those who advocate for death with dignity - say there is something to be learned from each of their cases.

Schiavo's legal battle centered on disputes over what care she would have wanted. She had no living will, but her husband said she would not want to live on a feeding tube. Her family fought to keep her alive, but ultimately lost.

The Vatican will not say if the pope issued such directives, but he signaled his intentions last year when he said "water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act." Such steps, he said, were "morally obligatory."

While Catholic teaching allows dying patients to refuse treatments that are burdensome, it calls the removal of food and water "euthanasia by omission."

 

Choosing paths

Advocates for allowing patients to choose death worry that the pope may be propped up as a worldwide example with a one-size-fits-all approach that is unworkable for some.

Dr. Timothy Quill, professor of medicine, psychiatry and medical humanities at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, noted that the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago chose a different path as he succumbed to cancer in 1996, opting for a hospice over technology.

"It's a very different message than what we heard from the pope," Quill said, "that if technology is available you have to use it. I think it's just not right."