Posted on 03/29/2005 11:26:11 AM PST by repubzilla
Just listening to Rush and a special report came over the radio and the reporter said that Pope may be given a feeding tube.
What's the list?
Surely -- as one interested in the Pope and Catholics -- you were aware she was being barred Holy Communion, even, on the same grounds he had barred her from ANY sustenance by mouth since yanking her out of therapy and into a living tomb.
I'm not interested in continuing discussion with you or your ilk, ContraryMary. I think your time is better spent making sure your Orwellian "Living Will" is airtight on the subject of whether or not you get food and water.
(Though I strongly suspect one outcome of this particular Morality Play will be a push for legalizing lethal injections. And why shouldn't we look to the unwanted cats and dogs euthanized at the Humane Society as our model when we graft most of our mores from the Animal Kingdom these days.)
As a result of reduced death rates, there are more people in their non-productive years than ever before. More children and more elderly people unable to participate in the world's work force increase the burden on the productive age group. [...] The National Academy of Sciences has said:
Either the birth rate must go back down or
the death rate must go back up.
Recommendations of the Task Force on Earth Resources and Population
This population control thing's a real "cereal and milk affair", looks like. I wonder if the soon-to-be-elderly Boomers understand what they meant by "death rate MUST go up."
I'll bet Terri does.
See this page. Allegedly we have 2 left, "The Glory of the Olives" and then "Peter the Roman"
...and Johnny Cochran.
Q: Does the Pope, or anyone else, have the moral right to refuse the feeding tube?
Sure.
IF (and only IF) we can establish that desire IS what the patient wants.
For Terri, we have nothing.
(Except what Micheal conveninetly "claims" to have suddenly remembered, discovered 7 years AFTER the initial incident, conveniently IMMEDIATELY after he spent 550,000.00 dollars of Terri's just-awarded therapy money on a pro-death attorney who JUST HAPPENED to have gotten a specific bill ALLOWING guardians to unilaterally WITHDRAWAL "normal" feeding to cause death through the FL legistlature JUST IN TIME to let Micheal declare that Terri wanted to die by withdrawing her "normal" feeding tube.)
Terri always, even now, breathe on her own. She is claimed (by witnesses) to be able to drink and eat as well.
Yeah. Right.
Yah know, the more old people that the pro-deathers kill early because they are inconvenient, the more Social Security money is available for the rest of them.
Here is a thought that I hope will be considered even by those who agree that Jeb and W have done all that they could within the law.
Michael Schiavo last week invited both the President and the Governor to visit his wife. I think they should go.
And bring her water.
Some argue that the Governor would be dangerously disrupting the balance of powers between the branches of government if he took executive action. Arresting him for bringing water would be such a breech as well, but it would be by those serving the court.
Fifty have already been arrested trying to bring Terri water. Go, Mr President. Go, Governor. Bring her water.
I totally understand the prohibition on artificial means of birth control, quite the contrary, I believed my comparison to be quite apparent. A feeding tube is an artifical contrivance to provide nourishment to an individual, perhaps I should have used artificial insemination or "test tube" baby methods for procreation.
OK, then why wouldn't that be considered suicide?
"Mind you, I'm really not trying to be a smart ass here, but wouldn't it be symbolic if the Pope, Rev. Falwell, and Terri all meet the Lord on the same day..."
Do you remember Steve Allen's show "Meeting of the Minds"? Picture them in a celestial elevator (along with Johnnie Cochran.)
The Peter the Roman is an unnumbered entry...an addendum as it were, reflecting on the "Seat", the Office of the Papacy and could easily be referencing the Glory of the Olive as the last entry.
Unless they have a new way to establish a g tube stoma site it is quite a intrusive incision to get a site started.
Hope he has the health to endure that.
Also if they go that intrusive I would like to see them close off the opening of his esophugus that is called "the wrap" as it will keep any feedings from refluxing up which could cause aspiration.
That's the way KV has his so he can tolerate feedings laying down seeing as with his thrashing around I cannot prop him up safely.
Prayers Up for the Pope.
Again makes me wish I was there to put my two cents in so he is gaurenteed the optimal after care. As others probably would too.
He better stay away from Judge Greer and out of Pinellas county, Florida if he is.
I can hear it now:
Jerry Falwell: "Uh, I'm with them."
I'm betting CS got to bypass security.
The two are still distinct morally regardless the fact that both are "techniques" (or "technology").Technology put to the service of improving and prolonging life, giving comfort, sustenance or healing is always moral.
Respect for the Person and Scientific Research
As Christians, we know that God intended for us perfect happiness. Had we not taken it upon ourselves to decide for ourselves what is "Good" and what is "Evil" -- like the calculating alchemists of pragmatism we turned out to be -- we never would have suffered or died or been needful of redemption in the first place.
While saints may understand better than most the fact that God indeed gifts some with suffering and it is perhaps a uniquely Catholic practice to be taught, as was I in my childhood, to "offer up" our suffering on behalf of others ... there is no requirement that anyone reject the assists of technology simply on the basis that they are not somehow "natural".
(The only case where this does not apply would be in availing one's self of technological assists obtained by clearly immoral and heinous means ... such as the experiments performed by the Japanese and Germans we "paperclipped" into the nation after WWII or the purposed manufacture and destruction of human lives as if they were so many grapes from which to press stem cell wine.)
But technology which performs an entirely unnatural act and in the process not only specifically contraverts God's will, results in the death of other human beings and radically disorders the relationship proper to man, wife and child -- the Family -- cannot possibly be moral.If you don't know it, I'm here to tell you that the GOP discovered a "right" to pre-determine the sex of one's children in 1970. Only a year prior, I was feeling my baby sister kick in my mother's womb ... all of us wondering and besides ourselves with anticipation at whether God's Blessing would be a boy or a girl. Those days are gone.
Why? Because we now cull and manufacture human beings using the same techniques we use on cattle.
Why? Let's let those who secured the hundreds of millions of 1970 dollars to "educate" us explain:
|
HON. GEORGE BUSH OF TEXAS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Monday, June 30, 1969 [pp. 17926-17927] Mr. BUSH. Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population, I would like to comment on two newcomers to the Washington scene. They are Dr. Philip Handler, the new president of the National Academy of Sciences and Dr. Roger Olaf Egeberg, the Assistant HEW Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs subject to his confirmation by the Senate. I was extremely heartened by the sense of urgency expressed by both of these national leaders on the problems of overpopulation and dwindling resources. In a recent interview with This Week magazine, Dr. Handler stated: "The greatest threat to the human race is man's own procreation. [...]
Dr. Egeberg has displayed his keen awareness of the crisis our world is facing by emphasizing that at the top of his list of priorities will be intensified efforts in environmental and population control through technological innovations and family planning, the reclamation of waste products, and the development of a low pollution automobile. [betcha thought these were "leftist" agenda items ...surprise!!! =)] We look to these two men for dynamic and purposeful leadership as the new administration charts its course. I include at this point in the record the text of the interview with Dr. Handler:
"Man is on the threshold of a biological revolution," says biochemist Philip Handler. "It will influence the life of each of us Just as greatly as the industrial revolution affected every living person." [... read the entire interview, it's fascinating ... ]
TW. Don't we already know enough? Dr. Handler. We thought we were quite knowledgeable, until today's problems pinned us to the wall. Our knowledge turned out to be primitive. The oral contraceptive pill and lUDs (intrauterine contraceptive devices) have been successful because they divorce the act of sex from the act of using contraception. What we now need is a cheap, safe mechanism in which failure to use contraceptives would result in failure to conceive, rather than the present situation, which is the other way around--failure results in conception. TW. What's the outlook for this? Dr. Handler. There are several approaches--by immunology, particularly--which offer some promise. [...]
TW. Your last point was evolution. Dr. Handler. There are something over 300 known hereditary diseases of man. We have learned to circumvent a number of them by keeping young people alive who suffer from those diseases. They grow up and reproduce, and spread their genes in the population. Instead of improving, the genetic pool of mankind is deteriorating. I think the total good of humanity demands that we minimize the incidence of these defective genes. We have no historical ethnic to guide us in this matter, The other side of the coin is to prevent the problem In the first place. There are some who hope to make DNA--containing only "good" genes--and insert it into the germ plasm of prospective parents. Maybe that will be possible In the distant future. Or you could improve inheritance by breeding. As its farthest extreme, using the processs I described for cattle, one could, conceivably, deliberately make more Einsteins, Mozarts, or whomever you choose. Another, more practical way is to pick distinguished men and preserve their sperm by freezing it in "sperm banks." Then married couples might enjoy their own sex relationship, but when they want to have a child, use sperm from the sperm bank. [...] |
So ... do you see the difference?
On the one hand, you have a technique (or technology) which alleviates an individual's suffering, heals him or otherwise prolongs his life.
On the other hand, you have a technique (or technology) which radically disorders the human being, the human family and imposes certain death on some lives in order to save other or simply satisfy their desires ... as if there were some "right" to have a child.
It's precisely the ready acceptance of this artifical reality which has left heteros in the awkward position of pretending that there is some fundamental difference between hetero marriage and homosexual marriage.
Where heteros have readily claimed their "right" to render children an option of marriage as well as their "right" to manufacture and/or purchase children on demand, they have no grounds on which to deny that right to others who -- "quite naturally" -- separate sex from procreation and, looking to the dismal rate of successful hetero marriages, claim their right to parent their Perfectly Planned children alone or with a partner.
The Task Force believes that much more knowledge is needed by the public in general about fertility control, contraception techniques and sex determination, as well as the social and material consequences resulting from increased population, in order that the broadest number of options are available to everyone in making personal decisions that affect the use of natural resources, family size and ultimately our environment.There must exist a greater sensitivity to these problems which cannot be provided by the federal government. The government can provide leadership and direction but should never be put into a position of having to enact controls on population as a result of public ignorance and indifference.
Amazing, isn't it? All it takes is "public ignorance and indifference" to problems to force the poor government into enacting whatever controls it deems "moral".
Death tolls have been reduced in every country to negligible rates from epidemics and diseases such as malaria, measles, smallpox, cholera, polio and tuberculosis; major advances have been made against heart disease and cancer, artificial organs can now prolong life.Since we accept these intrusions into nature's control of population as morally justified, are we not unwise to consider birth control with equal moral justificiation?
If we continue to support government activities to reduce disease and improve health in order to prolong life under the auspices of what is good for society, then should we not consider birth control as a government activity for similar reasons?
In the Task Force report on "Federal Government Family Planning Program" it was recommended that Congress increase appropriations for contraceptive research in the amount of $380,000,000.00 over the next five years.
If folks hop-to-it and not only get their Living Wills in order but steel themselves now to die timely sooner rather than later, euthanasia's going to be a steal compared to contraception where Joe Q. Taxpayer's concerned.
God help us, Robert A. Cook, PE. Even I didn't see things moving this quickly ... got too carried away with the fact Peter Singer failed to brain his mother once she no longer fit his definition of Person, I guess.
Right after JP,I died, so did my mom. After JP,II was elected, I told my dad we had a Polish Pope! (Did I mention that my Dad is Polish?) Now, JP,II isn't doing so well, and neither is my dad. Well, they're only one year apart. Those who are about to leave this earth need prayers, for sure. Those who are going to remain here for some time need prayers even MORE. PRAY FOR EACH OTHER.
The public would not have been so forgiving/understanding of her as it is of Michael
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