Posted on 05/18/2005 6:01:54 AM PDT by NYer
Terri Schiavo's parents on Wednesday thanked Pope Benedict for Vatican backing in their failed campaign to keep their brain-damaged daughter alive and gave him a framed picture of her.
"I can't even tell you how I felt," Terri's mother, Mary, told Reuters in an interview with other family members in St. Peter's Square just minutes after meeting the Pope.
"When I gave it to him he said: 'I know, I know about Terri' to me. I couldn't imagine the Holy Father saying to me 'I know, I know about Terri'. It was the most I could have ever, ever hoped for," she said.
Bob and Mary Schindler, their son Bobby and their daughter Suzanne, were in the front row at Benedict's general audience.
"When he said 'Terri' he held his hand to his heart like he was very sad," her father added.
Schiavo died on March 31 in Florida after a U.S. state court ordered the feeding tube, which sustained her for 15 years, removed at the request of her husband who said it was what she would have wanted.
Pope John Paul II, who died two days after Schiavo, had declared some life-extending treatments a moral duty for Roman Catholics.
Schiavo's case was followed around the world and sparked outrage at the Vatican, which compared the court to an executioner who "arbitrarily brought forward" the date of her death.
"As Roman Catholics, to see the Pope is the ultimate. We are trying to carry Terri's legacy on," her father said.
Terri's brother, Bobby Schindler, said the family was moved close to tears when they saw sick people being wheeled before the Pope to be blessed by him at the end of the audience.
"We could have done that. Terri is very similar to those people ... it was just sad that she couldn't be here with us to share it," he said.
Throughout the Terri Schiavo case, the Catholic Church defended the family's efforts to defend life, which the Church teaches starts at the moment of conception and ends at the moment of natural death.
"I think we are seeing a real attack on the culture of life and I think Terri's case exposed just how powerful and dangerous this 'death group' is and what's happening across America," her brother said.
"Our family has to continue to fight and speak out and try to expose just what this 'death group' is doing. I think having the Vatican showing their support really illuminates what is happening in America," he said.
Terri Schiavo's sister Suzanne Vitadamo said: "We did this for Terri. We believe she is sitting with the pope up in heaven. I'm sure she is looking down on us and smiling."
If it was unprovable she wanted to die, than it was unprovable that she wanted to live.
The gaping crack is that all the "doo doo" process in the world before a corrupted system is so much window dressing. Morally it's like arguing about the math you can do on a broken calculator. Even 20, 30 years ago Mr. Schiavo would have been sent packing from the courts, with excellent reason.
In Christian theology a person becomes perfect by being embraced in Christ.
So it all boiled down to what the law was engineered to say in such a case. Which was, as plainly demonstrated before our eyes, an abomination. Might as well brag about the fine German engineering of the trains that carried their cargo (er, people) to Auschwitz.
So why did you want to keep her from being with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven?
I don't debate with people who compare Terri's case to Nazi Germany. Goodbye.
The Kingdom of Heaven begins among Christians, here in this sin-marred universe. God wasn't joking when He thundered at Sinai with fire and smoke, and etched deeply in stone: "THOU SHALT NOT KILL!"
They are an excellent example of what happens when an ostensibly marvelous system -- oh, how Himmler kept the trains running on time! -- oh, how this was wrangled up and down the courts with every possible argument! -- goes hideously (Hildy-ously?) wrong. You run from the comparison because you know how apt it is.
I believe all Christians who were fighting for Terri to live, saw something special in her, beyond the fact that she was simply a creature made in God's image who had done nothing to merit being starved to death. She was a sacrificial lamb in a spiritual battle of colossal proportion. "When the foundations are destroyed, what shall the righteous do?" We now know the answer: they get Greered.
Did any of the money come out of your pocket?
You did know that didn't you?
And I should care about that? The poster was confusing the names and acknowledged it.
Strictly humorless, and we all know what you said about people who are humorless.
And since this isn't the topic of this thread, this will have to wait for another time perhaps.
Don't hold your breath though.
That was humor.
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