Posted on 01/23/2006 7:12:44 AM PST by NYer
SAFETY HARBOR - Michael Schiavo and Jodi Centonze were married in a private ceremony at Espiritu Santo Catholic Church on Saturday.
"It was very emotional," said John Centonze, brother of the bride, just after the noon ceremony. "It's been a long time coming. A lot of things happened in between."
The wedding came a day after the couple applied for a Pinellas County marriage license and 10 months after the death of Schiavo's first wife, Terri.
Terri Schiavo died March 31, two weeks after her feeding tube was removed, and 15 years after a cardiac arrest that left her in what most doctors called a persistent vegetative state. Her death was a most public process, with the Florida Legislature, Congress, the courts, pundits and interest groups weighing in.
The wedding, in contrast, was private. Mindful of the media circus that had whirled about Terri Schiavo's hospice for weeks, along with throngs of protesters, the families kept the time and location of Saturday's ceremony a secret. Three St. Petersburg Times journalists arrived at the church, but were asked not to go in.
Schiavo wore a black tuxedo and Centonze wore a long, flowing, white wedding gown. Their two children attended. The bride and groom did not make any public comment.
"Except for the fact that the world knows their name, it was like any wedding you've ever been to," said Michael Hirsh, who attended, and who is helping Schiavo write a book titled Terri: The Truth.
Hirsh estimated about 80 people attended. The priest offered no homily. Afterward the wedding party went to a reception at East Lake Country Club.
"It was just a beautiful ceremony," Hirsh said. "Everyone there was just extremely happy for them."
Hirsh said, "There weren't a lot of dry eyes in the place."
Centonze agreed. "I had a couple tears," he said.
Schiavo and Jodi Centonze met in a dentist's office and began dating a few years later. Terri Schiavo already had suffered her accident, and already was living in a nursing home.
Schiavo referred to Jodi Centonze as his fiancee for more than five years, as the Terri Schiavo case worked its way through the court system, and the halls of the Florida Legislature and Congress.
Some of Schiavo's friends compared him during this time to a man whose wife had Alzheimer's disease; he still loved his wife but also wanted companionship. But in the superheated rhetoric of Terri Schiavo's last months, critics called him an adulterer because he had taken up with another woman while still married.
In 1990, cardiac arrest deprived Terri Schiavo of oxygen for five minutes. Doctors eventually diagnosed her as being in a persistent vegetative state, meaning she was not conscious of her surroundings.
However, Terri Schiavo's family sharply disagreed and consulted doctors who disputed or doubted the diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state. They hoped to keep her alive and give her extensive therapy.
An autopsy concluded that Terri Schiavo never would have recovered from the brain damage she suffered during her 1990 collapse. Doctors have never competely understood what brought on her initial cardiac arrest.
<< How many other words have had their meaning changed while I wasn't paying attention? >>
All of them.
Amen! I have a lump in my throat after reading that. Thanks, it's just what I needed to hear. All of it.
<< It's very wierd, but in my investigation into advance directives after the atrocity of Terri's murder, I discovered a number of liberal Catholics who are not opposed to denying food and water to the disabled. It's appalling and evil. >>
I witnessed my father-in-law being starved and dehydrated to death at the Stonehill Franciscan Services retirement facility in Dubuque, Iowa. Effectively, that is, given that it owns and operates Stonehill, the dear old man, may he rest in peace, was Shiavted BY the Church.
I hope this bastard burns in hell for what he did, and I hope his new wife will do the same to him that he did to his former wife.
Interesting.
Actually, there is quite a bit that prevents Schiavo from marrying in the Catholic Church.
Here's an article written by Canon Law expert Dr. Edward Peters in The Rock magazine.
When two people marry, there arises between them a "bond" of marriage, known in canon law as ligamen (Canon 1085). This marriage bond is what canonically prevents either spouse from marrying someone else for so long as the other spouse is alive, even if the couple has obtained a civil divorce from their marriage. Ligamen is the canonical enforcement of the familiar wedding words "till death do us part" and, with rare exceptions not applicable in a case like this one, only the death of one spouse can free the other from the bond of marriage.
Now, the Church has been around for a long time and she is, in Pope Paul VI's memorable phrase, "an expert in humanity." The Church has seen people try any number of ways around the demands of permanent Christian marriage, including even, the killing of one spouse in order to marry another. But while the death of a spouse, natural or otherwise, certainly ends the bond of the marriage that once existed, if that death was brought about by the surviving spouse, it is quite possible that canon law will step in to prevent the survivor from gaining by the misdeed and attempting another marriage in the Church. It does this by establishing on a killer spouse an impediment to marriage known as crimen (Canon 1090).
If you think you see in the Latin word "crimen" an ancestor of our English word "crime", you're right, for both terms are getting at what is, in the eyes of the Church at least, criminal behavior. According to Canon 1090, "One who, with a view to entering marriage with a certain person, brings about the death of one's own spouse or of the other person's spouse, invalidly attempts that marriage." Thus does the Catholic Church prevent someone from entering a marriage when, in order to be free to contract such a marriage, that person had brought about the death of a former spouse.
The impediment of crimen was present in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (see 1917 CIC 1075) and even before that it had been a part of ecclesiastical law for many centuries. Today's canon law on crimen is, in comparison with earlier law, much simplified, but reliable commentators on it such as Beal, Doyle, Kelly, and Hervada believe it means pretty much just what it says. Focusing our discussion, then, on factors suggested by the Schiavo situation, three things are required in order for the canonical impediment of crimen to apply.
1) The original parties must have been validly married. This fact that can be presumed, however, whenever there is a public celebration of a Catholic wedding.
2) At the time of the killing, the surviving spouse must have been intending to enter marriage with a specific person once free of the prior marriage bond. This is a question of fact to be determined on a case-by-case basis. Evidence such as positive statements about wanting to marry another or behavior consistent with future marriage plans, can be used to show this intention to marry. By the way, the fact that one might have multiple motives for wanting to cause the death of one's spouse (say, also the desire to save money on the disabled spouse’s health care), would not obviate the desire-to-marry motive.
3) The death of one spouse must be brought about by the surviving spouse. This does not mean, though, that the survivor spouse needs to have "struck the deadly blow". Commentators agree that a death brought about at the behest of the survivor qualifies for imposition of the impediment. Even if, therefore, spousal death came about with the approval a civil court and no civil liability could be attached to the instigator, one would still be burdened by the canonical impediment if, under the Church's moral analysis, one is found to have been morally responsible for the death of one's former spouse.
Once incurred, the impediment of crimen never ceases on its own. The mere passage of time will not erase it, not even if, sadly, after many years, people more or less forget about the dead spouse. Pastors cannot grant a dispensation from this impediment, nor can bishops. Even if a cleric is found to witness the wedding of one laboring under the impediment of crimen, such an attempt at marriage is null and of no effect in the eyes of the Church. Only the Apostolic See can dispense from the impediment of crimen (Canon 1078 § 2, n. 2), and commentators agree that the Holy See only very rarely considers such dispensations. Going back at least a hundred years, they can find no example of a dispensation from the impediment of crimen being granted where the fact of one's moral responsibility in the death of a former spouse is public knowledge.
In sum, if, in order to be free to marry a third party, one spouse succeeds in ending the other spouse's life, even through a civilly-approved death by euthanasia, and then goes on to attempt that marriage, such a person, besides facing other moral and even canonical consequences for the spousal death, attempts the subsequent marriage without the blessings of or recognition by the Catholic Church.
Of course, there are those who could say that anyone who is willing to kill a spouse in order to marry another is not likely to worry too much about what the Church thinks about their second wedding. There might be some truth in that, but the fact that some people are going to disregard moral and canon law in their decisions does not mean the Church cannot, or should not, enunciate clearly the rules are by which we should strive to live. The matrimonial impediment established under Canon 1090 is not, and is not intended to be, the Church's primary response to the threat of legalized euthanasia, but it is part of that response, and it would behoove us all to know that, in its way, it too strives to defend the innocent.
http://www.canonlaw.info/a_schiavo.htm
Jodi had better make sure any insurance on her life has her mom and dad as beneficiaries.
hmmm Jodi would not have had a Catholic wedding in a long flowing white dress had he divorced.
Jess35 - PLEASE check out post #174 and watch the video of Terri interacting with her father, and then come back and tell us that she is just a "body":
The offer goes to everyone else, as well. IF you haven't seen THIS video, you ALL have to see it. I wish this one was put out there in the limelight - Terri just might be alive today if more people had seen THIS one.
ahref="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1381701/posts?q=1&&page=151
No, Michael is the "bad joke". IF he would have followed what the Catholic Church teaches, Terri probably would be alive today. That's the problem with people (and with Cardinal Law) - they want to make up their own rules. There's nothing wrong with the Catholic Church's teachings, it's the people that's the problem.
Thanks for posting that. Very informative. There's another thread running where these same questions have been asked. Maybe it could be posted there as well.
Both of Jodi's parents are deceased, as well as Michael's. Jodi's mom passed away the most recently, in August, 2004.
Incidentally, Jodi has had bad luck with cars. She was in two car accidents (1987 & 1988) which left her with chronic neck pain and back pain and she sued both the drivers, the cases settled out of court. Then her father died in a car accident.
Here's a link to the other thread with the initial question and a few responses:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1563501/replies?c=5
Sure. Just your basic, run-of-the-mill Catholic wedding ceremony.
For too many in this country, shame is a distant memory.
It certainly is to this one.
It is frankly obscene.
That's a start.
Those people are wrong. God decides....not us.
You talk ignorant......maybe your brain is shrinking also. ALL religions have some bad people....MOST of the Catholic Church is full of terrific people!!
OMG! I had forgotten he would NOT let a priest be with her at her death!! THAT should have been THE reason that a priest should NOT have married them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.