WASHINGTON (CNS) — As Congress and President George W. Bush rushed into place a law granting federal court jurisdiction in the case of severely brain-damaged Terri Schindler Schiavo, Catholic leaders emphasized that she must continue to be given nutrition.

But the law signed by Bush in the early morning hours of March 21 allowing Schiavo's parents to ask a federal judge to order the reinsertion of her feeding tube failed to achieve its goal when U.S. District Judge James Whittemore ruled against the parents' request March 22.

Whittemore said Schiavo's "life and liberty interests" had been protected by the state courts and that her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, had not established a "substantial likelihood of success" in the federal court process.

The ruling was immediately appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, praised Bush and members of Congress for the new law.

"Terri Schiavo is not terminally ill; she is a woman with cognitive disabilities," he said March 21, three days after the woman's feeding tube had been removed. "This law ensures that the decision to discontinue her assisted feeding will be reviewed with full attention to her legal rights."

Washington Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick noted at a March 21 news conference that Pope John Paul II has stated that people considered in a "vegetative state" still have the right to basic health care such as nutrition and hydration.

Deliberately removing water and food "in order to hasten a patient's death would be a form of euthanasia, which is gravely wrong," Cardinal McCarrick said.

He said this also was the position of the Florida Catholic bishops in a Feb. 28 statement on the Schiavo case.

"We join with them in praying that those who hold power over Terri Schindler Schiavo's fate will see that she 'continues to receive nourishment, comfort and loving care,'" he said.

On March 19 as several hundred congressional members hurried back to Washington from an Easter recess to vote in emergency session on the Schiavo legislation, Miami Archbishop John C. Favalora said that removing the feeding tube "violates the practice of moral theology in such disputed cases."

The archbishop's statement said that "food and water can only be denied if death is imminent or if it proves to worsen the individual's condition."

Bishop Thomas G. Wenski of Orlando, Fla., said the "controversial diagnosis" that Schiavo is in a "persistent vegetative state" does not change her right to basic care.

"Even while to speak of her as a 'vegetable' might give a false reassurance to our conflicted consciences, she still remains a human being," he said in a March 18 column in The Florida Catholic, Orlando diocesan newspaper.

Bush, in a prepared statement after signing the law, said it allows a claim on behalf of Schiavo before a federal court that her rights were violated by the withholding or removal of food, fluids or medical treatment necessary to sustain her life.

"In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life," said Bush.

Schiavo, 41, has been brain-damaged for the past 15 years. She can breathe on her own but requires nutrition and hydration through a feeding tube. She was receiving food and water through a feeding tube since 1990, when she collapsed at her home in St. Petersburg because of what doctors believe was a potassium imbalance. Her brain was deprived of oxygen for several minutes.

The new law allows Schiavo's parents to bring the suit. The Schindlers have been in a legal battle with their daughter's husband, Michael Schiavo, who wants the tube removed. The husband says this is what his wife would have wanted.

Michael Schiavo strongly criticized the actions by Congress and Bush in passing the law, saying they were intervening in a family matter.

"This is a sad day for Terri. But I'll tell you what: It's also a sad day for everyone in this country because the United States government is going to come in and trample all over your personal, family matters," he said March 21 on ABC's "Good Morning America."

The parents have been fighting the husband saying that their daughter would want to live, based partly on her Catholic beliefs.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge James Whittemore in Tampa, Fla., who held a hearing March 21 on the request by the parents that the tube be reinserted.

The hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., where Terri Schiavo lives has been the scene of numerous protests by supporters of leaving in her feeding tube.

The rapid work by Congress and Bush to get the law passed resulted from a March 18 decision by Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer reiterating Michael Schiavo's right to order the tube removed. The tube was removed later that day.