Wednesday, March 23, 2005
CROSSING THE RUBICON
An "Inside the Vatican" Newsflash:
An Innocent Woman Is Dying
The Terri Schiavo case prompts Vatican outrage. Can anything be done to save the dying woman? Also, the text of a little-known, and shocking, affidavit...
By Robert Moynihan, Editor, "Inside the Vatican" magazine
VATICAN CITY -- The case of a dying woman in Florida would not normally be a focus of attention for "Inside the Vatican."
But the case of Terri Schiavo, 41, severely brain damaged 15 years ago, and now deprived, since Friday, by court order, of food and water, has prompted outrage in the Vatican, where it is being seen as a kind of "Rubicon" being crossed during this Holy Week 2005 in the ongoing battle between what Pope John Paul II (himself in precarious physical condition) calls the "culture of life" and the "culture of death."
In this case, the "culture of death" is making a major, and possibly decisive, advance, paving the way for widespread acceptance of "euthanasia," or "mercy-killing" in western society, and indeed throughout the world, a number of Vatican officials are saying.
A tube that provides water and nourishment to Terri has been removed; this will lead, inevitably and soon, to her death. Otherwise, she would not die, at least for a considerable time, doctors agree.
No one in Rome seems ready yet to call for "pre-emptive intervention" to save Terri's life -- the type of intervention Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State, approved of in the Balkans in the 1990s, at the time of Serbia's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo.
But it is apparent that, unless something dramatic is done immediately, this woman will be starved to death.
If the legal institutions of a society fail to protect innocent human life, can those institutions continue to be the accepted arbiters of our social life?
Where are the US bishops? Where are the US Cardinals? Where are the men and women of good will, who normally would defend an innocent against those who would murder her?
There is much more to the Newsflash. I've emailed them for permission to blog the rest of it, and will do so when I get it.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
