As we near the anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s death, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life rips Michael Schiavo for actively working to kill her and abandon her in her hour of need.
Then, after Terri died, I called her death a killing, and I called you a murderer because you knew—as we all did—that ceasing to feed Terri would kill her. We watched, but you had the power to save her. Her life was in your hands, but you threw it away, with the willing cooperation of attorneys and judges who were as heartless as you were. Some have demanded that I apologize to you for calling you a murderer. Not only will I not apologize, I will repeat it again. Your decision to have Terri dehydrated to death was a decision to kill her. It doesn’t matter if Judge Greer said it was legal. No judge, no court, no power on earth can legitimize what you did. It makes no difference if what you did was legal in the eyes of men; it was murder in the eyes of God and of millions of your fellow Americans and countless more around the world. You are the one who owes all of us an apology.
Your actions offend us. Not only have you killed Terri and deeply wounded her family, but you have disgraced our nation, betrayed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and undermined the principles that hold us together as a civilized society. You have offended those who struggle on a daily basis to care for loved ones who are dying, and who sometimes have to make the very legitimate decision to discontinue futile treatment. You have offended them by trying to confuse Terri’s circumstances with theirs. Terri’s case was not one of judging treatment to be worthless—which is sometimes the case; rather, it was about judging a life to be worthless, which is never the case.
If we forget what happened to Terri, what’s to prevent it from happening again? What are we doing to make sure that it doesn’t happen to anyone else?
Technorati Tags: euthanasia, Schiavo
We’re not just in danger of forgetting this in our country, but the new source of our Legal Inspiration (see recent Supreme Court citations of European Law) is working to codify the murder of infants that are born (see this article). How the heck did we get this far so quickly? What are believers doing to recapture and reestablish morality in the public sphere?
What happened to Terri happens a lot, and it is legal. Michael Schiavo has stated this repeatedly, and he’s right. It’s tragic, but it’s true.
I don’t understand why people haven’t been fighting this long before what happened to Terri.
It’s murder.