Mar 28, 2007

This Sat., Mar. 31, is the 2nd anniversary of Terri Schiavo's killing

We should remind everyone we can that it was two years ago this week that Catholic housewife Terri Schiavo was put to death by judicial execution and cruel and unusual punishment.

Terri succumbed to 13 days of deliberate, court-ordered, police-guarded, media-applauded dehydration and starvation on Thursday, March 31, 2005.

Her only crime to warrant that death penalty was to have suffered brain-damage.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, in his Palm Sunday sermon shortly after Terri's lengthy execution ordeal began, said she should receive food and water. His spokesman Tod Tamberg called Terri "someone in desperate need of help."

But after Terri died, the Cardinal complicated things by issuing a bizarre statement that same day. The statement did not decry dehydrating and starving her to death; it seemingly endorsed it or acquiesced in it, and criticized the battle to save her life.

His Eminence said:

"It seems to me that the dignity and graces of a natural death have been violated through this endless process, and that what should be a time of quiet and peaceful prayer with a loved one has somehow become the platform for many groups with various agendas."

Was Cardinal Mahony calling it "a natural death" to dehydrate and starve a Catholic lady to death? Terri was in no danger of death! Her situation was not "end of life" but "middle of life!"

And by saying, "what should be a time of quiet and peaceful prayer with a loved one," was our Cardinal saying we should pray while we dehydrate and starve someone to death?

How could he first say Terri should be nourished and then issue that statement?

Fast forward: The "advanced health care directive" now on the Archdiocesan website starts off well by condemning euthanasia, and it notes that withholding food and water is always wrong. But then it leaves a mile-wide loose-language loophole by saying:

"However, situations can arise where the provision of nutrition and hydration no longer provides substantial benefits and is actually burdensome to a patient. In such cases, the provision of food and water, by artificial means or otherwise, may no longer be appropriate, even if the dying process is incidentally hastened."

Um, dehydration and starvation are burdensome, you know.

And don't look now, but starving and dehydrating people does not incidentally hasten their death, it materially hastens it!

For solid pro-life perspective, you can go to the:

* American Life League at www.all.org and read their Loving Will, and to the
* International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force at www.iaetf.org and read their similar document.

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