The bar has moved lower again. We always seem to be saying, “I told you so.” Fr. Rob Johansen reports that an elderly woman in Georgia is being starved to death. However, unlike Terri Schiavo, Mae Magouirk is lucid and not terminally ill. She is not comatose or vegetative and she has a living will that says that she should continue to receive medical care. But her granddaughter has determined that her 85-year-old grandmother shouldn’t live like this; “Grandmama is old and I think it is time she went home to Jesus,” she said. So, Grandmama is being deprived of food and water at a judge’s order, in direct violation of the law. As Fr. Rob says, “If a relative decides your life is no longer worth living, and a judge is willing to overrule your living will and make him or her guardian, you too could end up dying over 10-14 days, starving and dehydrating to death.”
What a slippery slope that is. It appears the civil liberties no longer exist for the old or disabled. Welcome to the brave, new world where your worth to society will be determined and if you don’t measure up, it’s curtains for you.
What can we do? This murderous trend of the innocent is horrible!
Get out there and convert people to Christianity again. We have been living on the legacy of the Church for a century. Without Christianity, the world turns into a den of beasts—worse than beasts—we can murder with premeditation.
How does conversion and dialogue intermingle? I think it has to be one or the other. Dialogue assumes two equals come together to talk. Conversion assumes that one is superior to the others. You can’t have it both ways, and until we figure what we are about, nothing much is going to happen.
Carrie, John Paul taught with his actions how dialogue is the first step toward conversion.
We do come together as equals when we dialogue. For we are all God’s children. And He taught us to love our enemies. If we hope to convert souls we must first recognize them as our equals, our brothers in Christ, even if they do not believe us to be equal. Remember our true task is to preach the Gospel, it is the Holy Spirit who moves men’s hearts to conversion. We are simply the conduit through which the Spirit moves. We must trust Him as we enter into dialogue, trust that if we love our enemies as our Lord did, He will move them to conversion as He did the woman taken in adultery, the tax collectors, the thief on the cross, St Paul and all those who he spoke to with love.
News flash!!! People are having their nutrition/hydration withdrawn all the time in this country, with or without medical directives. If the family, doctors, and medical facility all concur that’s all it takes.
It happened in my husband’s family, in a Catholic nursing home. I was told later that this particular nursing home “does it all the time”.
The frequency of this will only increase as long as long-term medical care is being funded by the government. Killing people off will be necessary for balancing the budget.