From what Dr Byrne has told me re: Church teaching, it's that as long as one major organ is functioning ( it always comes down to the heart) that the person is still alive even if medically or mechanically they are being assisted with other functions.

There's no actual Church teaching on the matter, just a lot of theological opinion.  I understand he's pushing back on the bogus "brain death" criterion, and is trying to prevent organ harvesting, and also attempting to use the benefit of the doubt to classify the removal of organs in such individuals as murder, since they often deliberately keep the other organs live precisely so they can harvest them.  But there's no clear teaching that the soul remains in the body if the bodily organs are simply being kept alive artificially.  I personally lean toward the fact that when the body has become so damaged that it can no longer sustain the soul by virtue of its own inherent "life force", as it were, no amount of mechanical devices circulating blood, pumping the heart, or pushing air into the lungs would cause the soul to remain within the body.  I distinguish between the body's own intrinsic life force vs. some external manipulation.  Now obviously, if ANY organs are functioning (with or without mechanical stimulation) the presumption must be that they're alive and that taking the organs is murder, since you really don't know.  In fact, it does happen where they take people off life support and then they don't actually die but continue living.  So that must be the legal and moral standard, the violation of which should be considered murder.  There is a certain amount of dispute so that the Church permits the administration of Last Rites (at least conditoinally) until rigor mortis sets in, with rogor mortis being the unequivocal sign of corruption, which happens as a result of the animal soul (life force) having left the body.  Yet it's not certain that the soul remains there until rigor mortis, just that it MIGHT, at least in some cases.  We know, obviously, that Our Lord suffered no such corruption despite His soul having left His body.

A misunderstanding here is that a dead person can be kept alive by machines.  They cannot. The lungs stiffen and will not inflate with a ventilator and a dead heart can't be paced. So there still needs to be some legitimate "life" intrinsic in the body to be able to be maintained by life support.  Just a clarification.
Life support is not a mandate ( just a holdover) to interfere with the natural processes that are inevitable, so I agree in part with you


Be that as it may, I share your concerns for unnecessary mechanically extended efforts

So, we still don’t know for sure what is his status. No official announcement has been issued. 

So, we still don’t know for sure what is his status. No official announcement has been issued.

Indeed, this has been extremely confusing.

I wish we could track down the individual who first put out the information that he had died at noon (London time).

Yeah, I'm questioning whether they were in the position to know that it was a "fake".  Like you, I would find it astonishing if someone had gone out of their way to "fake" something like that.  What's the point?  I could see saying that the information was not correct, but that it was completely fake?

If there's some wicked, malicious, hateful troll out there who's so evil as to "fake" something like that, we need to find and expose the scuм.

I for one think it was real, but that the information was wrong, and/or the individual was distraught is saying that he basically died when doctors delivered the prognosis that Bishop Williamson could not recover and WOULD CERTAINLY die.  So a prognosis of death mistaken for or taken as being tantamount to a declaration of death.  Or "he's basically/effectively dead but just being sustained by life support."  That makes more sense to me than a fake troll job.

There are so many evil people out there.  Also so many dumb people who jump to conclusions and don’t listen fully.  Hard to say in this case.  

I spoke with a close friend recently who is in contact with someone at Bishop Williamson’s bedside. He is still alive but not expected to last through the night.

This comes from someone who is personally with His Excellency.

Thank you for posting