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| A Journal of Catholic News and Views |  |
20 Aug 2003 |
Help Save Mrs. Terri Schiavo's Life
by Thomas A. Droleskey
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A Plea to Pope John Paul II and the Bishops of Florida
The 1998 murder of Hugh Finn in a Manassas, Virginia, nursing home by means of the removal of tubes which kept him fed and hydrated was not an anomaly. No, sadly, it is the norm in nursing homes and hospitals across this nation right now. Euthanasia is not in our future. It is here. And it is time we faced this evil squarely. For, once more, an innocent human life is at risk of being starved and dehydrated to death under cover of law while bishops say and do nothing to save that life.
Mrs. Terri Schiavo, though brain damaged, is able to respond to those around her, is nearing the point of being starved and dehydrated to death. Her husband, who admits visiting her about ten minutes a month, has won a court order to have her feeding and hydration tubes removed. He has even gone so far as to bar a priest from administering what is called the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick in the new order of things from visiting her to administer the sacrament once more before she is starved and dehydrated to death.
As the cruel and barbaric death that awaits this victim soul is only days away, one would think that the Roman Catholic bishops of Florida would be raising their voices, both individually and collectively, to demand that Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a Roman Catholic, intervene to stop the execution of Terri Schiavo. As of this writing on August 20, 2003, however, the Catholic bishops of Florida have been individually and collectively silent. The same bishops who do not hesitate for one moment to demand that Governor Bush commute the death sentences of individuals who have been convicted of the most heinous criminal acts of murder imaginable do not believe it is within their pastoral duty to demand that the unjust death sentence that a Florida judge has handed down against Terri Schiavo be stayed and that her parents, who are more than willing to continue to care for her now as they cared for her when she was a helpless infant, be permitted to provide her with the love and the support being denied her by her husband, who has fought vigorously for the right to starve and dehydrate her to death.
Many American bishops speak boldly about caring for the poor and the marginalized. However, many of them do not identify the unborn and the chronically ill as among the poor and marginalized of our society. As is the case with Communist collectivists, many American bishops identify with the masses collectively while they ignore the plight of the suffering sheep right within the very flocks that have been entrusted to their pastoral care for their eternal and temporal welfare. Terri Schiavo is in need of help. Catholic moral theology demands that food and hydration be provided a patient who is incapable of feeding himself. The demands of the Gospel are quite clear in this regard: Our Lord said, as is recorded in Saint Matthew's Gospel, that whenever we feed the hungry and clothe the naked and visit the sick and imprisoned that we are feeding and clothing and visiting Him. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is suffering in the person of Terri Schiavo, a member of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ that is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. To ignore the plight of Terri Schiavo as she is about to be starved and dehydrated to death is to ignore the plight of Christ suffering in her and with her. No serious Catholic, no less a man who has been consecrated to the fullness of the priesthood that is the episcopate, can abdicate his responsibility to come to the assistance of a woman being starved and dehydrated to death for merely having committed the "crime" of being an inconvenience and a financial "burden" to her self-absorbed husband. He is a man and a husband who has long ago abandoned his commitment to care for his wife whether in sickness or in health and his commitment to see to safeguard the welfare of her immortal soul unto eternity.
The failure of the Florida bishops to come to Terri Schiavo's assistance should really come as no surprise. Many American bishops say and no nothing about the daily slaughter of the preborn in their mothers' wombs. They take no action against American politicians of either major political party who are Catholic and support by their words and actions the American Holocaust of the preborn. Indeed, they permit these politicians to receive Holy Communion and to be considered as Catholics in good standing, confusing the faithful no end. Admitting that there are a few bishops who have spoken out and done things against pro-abortion Catholic politicians, the failure of the most of the bishops to speak out against Catholics in public life who support abortion reaffirms the false belief of many lay Catholics that it is not necessary for a Catholic to pray and to work for the restoration of the primacy of the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law as the basis of order in the lives of individual and their societies under the Social Reign of Christ the King. Matters touching upon life and death are thus viewed by many Catholics as "private judgments" about which the Church has "right" to interfere, a belief that is evidently shared by the bishops of Florida as evidenced by their individual collective failure to support Terri Schiavo's parents in their efforts to save their daughter's life from a cruel and unjust death at the hands of American judge.
Just as was the case with the late Hugh Finn, who was starved and dehydrated to death as a result of the efforts of his wife and a judge in the Commonwealth of Virginia, it is Mrs. Schiavo's parents who have battled to save their daughter from an unspeakably cruel and thoroughly immoral death. And just as was the case with Hugh Finn (in which two bishops, Archbishop Thomas Kelly of Louisville, Kentucky, the city where Hugh Finn had been a popular anchorman prior to an automobile accident in March of 1996, and Bishop Walter Sullivan of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, supported Mrs. Michelle Finn's efforts to have her husbands nutrition and hydration removed), Catholic bishops a Catholic "theologian" testified in Terri Schiavo's case that it is thoroughly permissible to remove feeding and hydration tubes as they are considered to "extraordinary" means to sustain life. The very shepherds who should be supporting Mr. and Mrs. Schindler, Terri's parents, look the other way as Catholic "experts" give testimony contrary to the teaching of the Church and as courts impose a death sentence upon an innocent human being.
The failure of the Florida bishops stands in stark contrast to the injunction of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical letter on the Chief Duties of Christians as Citizens, Sapientiae Christianae, issued in 1890:
"It is a high crime to withdraw allegiance from God in order to please men; an act of consummate wickedness to break the laws of Jesus Christ, in order to yield obedience to earthly rulers, or under pretext of keeping the civil law, to ignore the rights of the Church: we ought to obey God rather than men. The answer, which of old Peter and the other apostles were used to give the civil authorities who enjoined unrighteous things, we must, in like circumstances, give always and without hesitation. No better citizen is there, whether in time of peace or war, than the Christian who is mindful of his duty; but such a one should be ready to suffer all things, even death itself, rather than abandon the cause of God or of the Church. ...
"But if the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then truly, to resist become a positive duty, to obey a crime; a crime, moreover combined with a misdemeanor against the State itself, inasmuch as every offense levelled against religion is also a sin against the State. Here anew it becomes evident how unjust is the reproach of sedition: for the obedience due rulers and legislators is not refused; but there is a deviation from their will in those precepts only which they have no power to enjoin. Commands that are issued adversely to the honor of God, and hence are beyond the scope of justice, must be looked upon as anything than laws."
Unless it is the erroneous judgment, both individually and collectively, of the Florida bishops that hydration and nutrition may be removed from patients, no matter their consciousness (Terri Schiavo is quite conscious, by the way, although that in no way is determinative of the immoral nature of the removal of her food and water), they must understand that the judge's decision in Terri Schiavo's case is unjust and is adverse to the honor of God, Who has decreed the sanctity and inviolability of all innocent human life. The Florida bishops would do well to consider also the following passage from the afore-quoted Sapientiae Christianae:
"Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as we have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with the power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of the faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains, 'Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions; and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians; and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence the more assured, God aiding, the triumph. Have confidence: I have overcome the world. Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.
"The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error."
This firm statement of the sort of apostolic courage that is required by both bishops and the laity should be enough to inspire the Holy Father and the bishops of Florida to do their simple and manifest duty to intervene immediately, loudly and persistently in the case of Terri Schiavo. By doing so, they will not only be trying to save Mrs. Schiavo's life but they will remind Catholics that it is never morally licit or permissible to remove food and water from a patient, no matter how that food and water is being administered, and that no family member has any authority in the Divine positive law or natural law to take any action that will result as its direct intent the death of an innocent human being. The Terri Schiavo case has made news because her parents and friends want to save her life. How many other people are there who are being starved and dehydrated to death at this very moment because no relative or friend is intervening to save their lives? A firm statement by the Holy Father and the bishops of Florida in the Terri Schiavo case might help save others besides Mrs. Schiavo.
As is the case with the issue of sodomy, sentimentality has replaced the faith in the lives of ordinary Americans, with even a lot of orthodox Catholics allowing themselves to be brainwashed by the slogans of those pushing euthanasia down on throats in the name of "mercy" and "compassion." All talk of redemptive suffering has been muted. And we have had the scandal of bishops such as Walter Sullivan and Thomas Kelly endorsing the withdrawal of food and water in the Finn case, a policy embraced by the late Rockville Centre, New York, Bishop John R. McGann in a pastoral letter on the issue he released in 1996. Never mind the fact that the Holy Father himself has reiterated the necessity of providing food and water. No, some American bishops have actually endorse the murder of human beings, with Archbishop Kelly actually saying in 1998 that Hugh Finn's condition was a "burden" which Mrs. Finn had the right to consider when making her decision to withdraw her husband's food and water. This is pretty much the same argument that was made by the attorney who is representing Terri Schiavo's husband.
How much do we love Our Lord? He bore our burdens on the wood of the Holy Cross. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity permitted Himself to suffer in His Sacred Humanity as a result of our sins. But He not only bore our sins on Good Friday. He conceived in His mind's eye each of our lives. He embraced with His outstretched arms all of the sufferings that we would endure in our own lives. He redeemed those sufferings, making it possible for us to be co-redeemers of the world with Him if only we cooperate with the graces He won for us on the Cross to offer up our trials and tribulations in union with His own. A disciple of Our Lord is called to embrace suffering as the means of his redemption, not to take flight from it. And a disciple of Our Lord is called to recognize in one who is suffering a source of grace for themselves by their faithful service to the suffering Christ in that person, no less our own spouse.
Our belief in redemptive suffering must be real and it must be abiding. We must realize that none of us, that's right, none of us, suffer in this life as much as our sins deserve. We cannot possibly imagine the horror and pain that just one of our venial sins caused Our Lord in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Cross, no less any mortal sins we may have committed. Each of us owes God a debt as a result of each one of the sins we have committed. And in His infinite mercy He permits us to pay Him back by means of our patient endurance of sufferings in this life, sufferings which must be continued in Purgatory if we die in state of grace and have not yet paid back what we owe because of our sins.
No human being need suffer alone. No human being need suffer in vain. That is why it is important always to bear in mind the image of Our Lord on the Cross. That is why it is important for a Catholic to be in the presence of a Crucifix at all times. All we need to do is to look at a Crucifix to remember that there is nothing that we can endure in this life which is the equal of what our Lord endured on the Cross. And we have to remember that Our Lord provides us with all of the supernatural helps that we need not only to endure our sufferings, but to actually prosper in the midst of them and to provide an example to others that we trust in His mercy and His love. We believe in the ineffable value of redemptive suffering not only to pay back the debt owed our own sins, but to help the Poor Souls in Purgatory—and to apply some of the merits of our suffering for the good of the souls here in Church Militant on earth. Those of us consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart understand that we, as her slaves, give her all of the merit we earn to be used as she sees fit for the honor and glory of the Blessed Trinity and for the salvation and sanctification of souls.
Mind you, the specific facts of the Terri Schiavo case, eerily similar to the Hugh Finn case five years ago, should cause us to consider once more the rotten fruit of a culture that is founded on secularism and religious indifferentism. A nation that rejects the primacy of the Social Kingship of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ descends logically and inevitably over the course of time to the rejection of all things supernatural, including redemptive suffering. A Catholic is called to be so formed in the crucible of Our Lord's Holy Cross that he sees all things through the eyes of the Holy Faith, embraces all suffering with joy, and is ready to give himself readily to those around him who are suffering, no matter the cost in human terms. For it matters not one whit that Mrs. Terri Schiavo (or any other person in a similar circumstance) might be brain-damaged or in an actual coma (which is not the case with Mrs. Schiavo). No one has the right to starve and dehydrate another human being. No court and no state legislature have the authority to permit such starvation and dehydration under cover of law. No amount of public opinion in favor of the murder of a suffering soul can ever justify subjecting a human being to a cruel, tortuous death caused by the withdrawal of food and water.
I must make two final pleas, one to the Vicar of Christ, His Holiness Pope John Paul II, the other to Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
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Dear Holy Father,
You have raised your office in the past twenty-five years against the horror of abortion. You have spoken out against other crimes against innocent human life. You have made it a point to intervene directly in the cases of convicted criminals who have been sentenced to death after due process of law, pleading with governors and presidents to commute death sentences in individual cases, including that of the now executed Timothy McVeigh in 2001. However, Your Holiness has not once intervened in the case of a person being starved and dehydrated to death by a family member. Although you spoke in general terms about the immorality of the withdrawal of food and water prior to Hugh Finn's murder in 1998, you did not plead with the then Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, James Gilmore, to intervene to save his life. You never mentioned the name of Hugh Finn, as you have mentioned the names of men and women who have been convicted of heinous crimes.
Please, Your Holiness, intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo. Do not be concerned about embarrassing the bishops of Florida. Be concerned only about the fact that Terri Schiavo is being put to death unjustly. She has parents and family members and friends who love her unto eternity. Raise your voice in her defense. Plead with Governor Jeb Bush to save her life. Demand that your own bishops do their duty as shepherds of Christ's flock to save this innocent lamb.
Terri Schiavo needs the help of her spiritual father on earth. Will Your Holiness give it to her?
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To Florida Governor Jeb Bush:
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Dear Mr. Governor,
You are no doubt aware of the case of Mrs. Terri Schiavo. The facts of her case are well known. If it is not within your power to reverse the judge's unjust decision that may result in her cruel death by starvation and dehydration, then I beg you to call a special session of the Florida State Legislature, if your legislature is not in session at this time, to pass a bill to reverse the judge's decision and to place custody of Mrs. Schiavo in the hands of her parents and those others who are fighting to save her life. Please do not be concerned about what political consultants and pundits may advise you. You have a duty as a Catholic and as a civil official to save innocent human life. Unite yourself now, publicly and unequivocally, with Terri Schiavo and the Schindlers. Act decisively and boldly. Do not delay. A fellow member of the Mystical Body of Christ needs your help. Will you come to her assistance?
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Our Lady suffered at the foot of the Cross. No mother ever suffered what our Lady suffered, as there was a perfect, spotless communion between her own Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of her Divine Son. She showed the measure of her perfect love by standing valiantly at the foot of the Cross. And she will help us prove our love for her Son by how well we stand at the foot of the cross borne by the ones we love, and by how well we bear it out of love for her Son in our own lives.
The love of redemptive suffering must be preached by our bishops, not a utilitarianism which has turned American hospitals and nursing homes and long-term care facilities into killing chambers.
Our Lady of Sorrows, please pray for Terri Schiavo and the efforts of those who are trying to save her life in this vale of tears.
Saint Therese of Lisieux, after whom Terri Schiavo is named, pray for Terri and her parents and her family members. Bend the heart of her husband. Bend the heart of the Holy Father and the bishops of Florida. Bend the heart of Governor Bush. May they find in your Little Way a way to help save the life of Mrs. Terri Schiavo.
P.S. It is being recommended that we pray the Glory Be to the Father, to the Son, and the Holy Ghost prayer twenty-four times in honor of the twenty-four years of the remarkable life of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, adding the praying, "Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, pray for us." This is to be prayed each day while Terri Schiavo remains alive and her life remains in mortal jeopardy.
Dr. Droleskey will be speaking at 7:00 p.m. at the Hilton Springfield in Springfield, Illinois, on Tuesday, August 25, 2003. Entitled "No Other Name by Which Men Can be Saved," the talk will focus on the false foundations of ecumenism, stessing the wisdom contained in Pope Pius XI's Mortalium Animos, issued in 1928. It will last between an hour and seventy-five minutes. Questions will be taken from the floor. A free will offering will be collected. Those desiring to receive a tax-deduction for their contributions may make checks payable to Christ or Chaos, Inc., a fully tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization.
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle...
