Terri Schiavo's soul

Tara asks:
"Moreover, her parents say, depriving Schiavo of nutrition and water is something that she as a Catholic would object to. 'We are now in a position where a court has ordered her to disobey her church and even to jeopardize her immortal soul,' said the parents' attorney Gibbs." I know you're no Catholic scholar, but please explain to me how this last sentence has any theological truth to it. The idea that God would punish her is.....appalling, to say the least.

From what I understand, the basic premise of the lawyer's statement is that if Terri were to voluntarily end her own life by choosing to have her feeding tube removed, that would be an act of suicide. Because suicide means killing a living being--yourself--it is considered in Catholic theology mortal sin, and because you can't repent of it before you die, you will have that sin on your soul when you come before God for judgement. I'm not sure if they still believe in Purgatory, but the idea there was that your leftover sins would be purged from you through painful torture until you're purified of them. The trick, really, is to confess and repent all your sins right before you die so you won't have to burn them off in purgatory. :-) And, the bigger the sins, the longer it takes to get rid of them. Once they're gone, though, you get to go to heaven. Mortal sins, however, cause immediate damnation if they're not repented of, and suicide is one of them. (Incidentally, so is missing Mass on Sunday)

Some things that don't make sense about the lawyer's assessment of Catholic doctrine:
1. Terri won't actually be the one making the decision to end her life, so she wouldn't be guilty of suicide.
2. She's had communion several times according to one article I was reading. (It was about someone complaining that he couldn't put food in her mouth because it's a choking hazard, but who had been giving her "spiritual" communion for many years) This suggests that she is in a state of grace.

I think where I ultimately disagree with the official Catholic view of this situation is in its assertion that committing suicide is a sin that causes damnation. God can choose to forgive anything, and while suicide suggests a deeply damaged relationship with God, it doesn't mean that God has stopped loving a person, or that the person has completely forsaken God. To my mind, suicide is more tragedy than sin. Similarly, the death of Terri Schiavo's body is more the final tragedy in a series of tragedies than it is a sin of any type.