Philip K. Eichner

Philip K. Eichner, S.M., is an American educator, Marianist priest and Catholic activist. He chairs the Board of Directors of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and he has been president of three Catholic schools on Long Island. He is perhaps most noted as successful respondent in the New York State legal case In the Matter of Philip K. Eichner, which helped to establish the rights of patients and their proxies to decline extraordinary means of life support.

Eichner graduated from Chaminade High School in Mineola, New York, in 1953. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Dayton and his graduate degree in theology from the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland, and he was ordained in 1966, From 1967 to 1992 he served as president of his high school alma mater, Chaminade. He was also leader of the Meribah Province—the religious community of brothers who teach at Chaminade. This community separated from the Marianist’s New York Province during the 1970s “because of deep differences concerning ministry and the role of the school apostolate”. The Meribah Province assumed responsibility for a second school, Kellenberg Memorial High School, in 1987, with Eichner as president. Eichner is the President of Kellenberg and of St. Martin de Porres Marianist School, the Meribah Province’s third and final school.

While President of Chaminade, Eichner established an endowment drive called the Torch Fund, to defray the costs of tuition. He thus helped initiate a trend among Catholic schools towards raising endowments and limiting tuition.

Eichner has taken stands on several educational, religious and social issues and controversies.

One such issue is a terminal patient’s right to refuse "extraordinary means" of life support, or to have them refused on his or her behalf. In 1980, Eichner petitioned the New York State Court of Appeals to allow removal of a respirator keeping Brother Joseph C. Fox alive. Fox, an 88-year-old member of the religious community that Eichner led, had fallen into a coma after a cardiac arrest that occurred during a hernia operation. In the wake of the Karen Ann Quinlan case, Fox had expressed his strong desire not to be kept alive by extraordinary means, according to Eichner and other Marianist brothers at Chaminade. The court appointed Eichner “committee of the person of Brother Fox” and authorized him to have the respirator removed. He did so, and on January 24, 1980, Fox died of congestive heart failure.

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