Lord Have Mercy

Hi Ardent Listener. Thank you for this thread. I have posted a poll in this forum with a number of different options for helping Terri Schiavo. The name of the poll is [color=red:2aoqvdgz][b:2aoqvdgz]’Terri Schiavo: What does your faith in action look like?'[/b:2aoqvdgz][/color:2aoqvdgz]

On the first post of that poll are [b:2aoqvdgz][color=red:2aoqvdgz]links which will help people to actually put their faith into action[/color:2aoqvdgz][/b:2aoqvdgz]. Please [b:2aoqvdgz][color=orange:2aoqvdgz]write[/color:2aoqvdgz], [color=blue:2aoqvdgz]sign[/color:2aoqvdgz], [color=violet:2aoqvdgz]vote[/color:2aoqvdgz][/b:2aoqvdgz] now! Thank you for taking the time to read this post.

Candleflame,
There has been a big to do (in the U.S.) about this woman from Florida. In a nutshell she suffered severe brain damage in 1990 and has been in a permanent vegetative state since then. She can respond to people but doctors have said her brain has the development of a 6-11 month old person. In other words she doesn’t really talk or anything, but she knows when people are around her and can respond in some ways.

She has been on a feeding tube for the last 15 years while in this vegetative state that she will most likely never recover from.

She is married to a man named Michael Schiavo who wants to remove her feeding tube (which will essentially starve her to death) and has stated repeatedly that Terri (before the accident in 1990) had said she would never want to be kept alive on life support. Terri’s parents disagree with that and want to keep her connected to the feeding tube.

There has been court action sicne as early as 1998 when Michael wanted the feeding tube removed and her parents did not. Michael, since he is her husband, is the legal guardian for her.

Here is a Terri Schiavo timeline[/url:38shydp5].

[quote:15rhef0i]Thanks for the explanation.

The perspective on euthanasia in secular society up here is a little different, because the lobby for it is larger and we’re generally a more liberal country, but that does strike me as… I don’t know how to put it. I can’t see how letting someone starve to death over a fortnight is being kind to them. If people are willing to pay for her complete care, and look after her, I don’t think that an unwillingness to watch someone suffer means that they have to be made to stop suffering through whatever means possible[/quote:15rhef0i]

1) If Terri had [b:15rhef0i]really[/b:15rhef0i] said that she didn’t want a feeding tube (as her husband claims) then why did he allow her to have the feeding tube in the first place?

2) No extraordinary measures is one thing; not allowing the nurses to turn Terri or brush her teeth is another thing. Terri had to have several teeth removed because they had never been brushed and she developed bed sores because she was infrequently washed and turned.

3) Quite a bit of money on the line for a guardianship which was in name only and not in fact. Where were the reports that the husband was supposed to file?

4) And a marriage which was in name only and not in fact, since the husband had taken up with a girlfriend and had two children by her. Obviously a conflict of interest. Why did Judge Greer continue to rule for Terri’s death?

5) Not wanting to see Terri suffer? Or not wanting to inconvenience himself(the husband)?

Admin edit: no need to cross-post. See rule #5[/url:jv7vyakj].

This was sent to me in an e-mail. I feel it is of worthiness for the conversation here. Please discuss as you see fit.

[quote:v39564gi]Bishop Thomas Wenski[/url]”]On Friday, the feeding tube that provided Terri Schiavo with the normal care of food and water
was withdrawn. Barring last-minute intervention, Terri has now begun to die by starvation. One
can pray that her husband will have a change of heart or that the state of Florida will find
new grounds to intervene so that, in spite of what transpired on Friday, a safer course might
still be taken and that Terri “continue to receive nourishment, comfort and loving care” — as
we Catholic Bishops of Florida have continually advocated.

As Pope John Paul II points out in his just released book, Memory and Identity, the crisis of
our age is rooted in the presumption that we can decide for ourselves what is good and evil
without reference to God. Yet, the Decalogue, while certainly an expression of divine positive
law, is nonetheless more than a religious code: It is a reflection of natural law — of the
law written on the heart of man. In other words, we cannot not know that it is wrong to kill
innocent human life.

That we do nevertheless kill is evidence of the misterium iniquitatis at work in the world;
but, when we do kill, we usually seek by evasions and subterfuges to make up excuses for our
crimes. Thus, we disguise what we do by rationalizations: We don’t abort “babies,” we remove
the “products of conception”; we don’t murder unarmed civilians, we engage in “ethnic
cleansing”; and when we dispatch with a fatal cocktail to the feeble minded it is because such a
life is lebensunwerter Leben (life “unworthy of life”) — as euthanasia was justified in the
Germany of the Third Reich.

In Terri’s case, we can speak of the controversial diagnosis of PVS — persistent vegetative
state. Yet, even while to speak of her as a “vegetable” might give a false reassurance to our
conflicted consciences, she still remains a human being, no less human than Christopher Reeve,
who was kept alive on a respirator until he died late last year of natural causes. No one
begrudged his heroic struggle to live, and we were all edified by his courage and that of his
family who stood by him. Terri, however, is not being kept alive by any machine as was Reeve
for most of his last decade of life. She only needs assistance to be fed. Does the fact that
he could speak and she cannot make it right to deprive her of the ordinary means of human
sustenance? If so, how can any of our seriously ill brethren ever again trust themselves to
sleep while under a doctor’s care?

Some would argue that to remove her feeding tube is simply to let nature take its course. Yet
what is “natural” about starving to death? True, she was fed through a feeding tube — she
depends on others, but so did Christopher Reeve, and so does a newborn baby depend on others
for nutrition and hydration. John Donne said: “No man is an island entire of itself”. As
members of the human race we all are interdependent on each other to one degree or another.
The mark of a civilized society was that the helpless had the greatest claim on our
protection. Now it would seem that they have the least.

And so, Holy Week, the annual remembrance of Jesus’ passion and death, begins with the Passion of Terri Schiavo. Terri’s agony has already begun and, barring some miracle, the denouement of
Terri’s drama will be her death.

This week, in recalling Jesus’ Passover from death to life, we celebrate the fact that the
misterium iniquitatis is overcome through the misterium crucis.

From the cross Jesus cried out, and his cry is echoed today by all those held captive to a
world of pain and sin.

As Terri shares in his passion, she will share in his Resurrection. Like Jesus did, Terri
Schiavo cries out, though with muted voice: “I thirst!”

Thomas Wenski is the bishop of the Diocese of Orlando. He wrote this commentary for the
Orlando Sentinel.[/quote:v39564gi]

Latest news reports show the parents are ready to pack it in because they’ve tried all the courst and legal measures possbile and have been shot down for each one.

It’s been 9 days since the tube was removed.