Wednesday, March 23, 2005
WHAT TERRI IS TEACHING ME
I sit here at this computer screen and become increasingly more outraged and incredulous as attempt after attempt to save a disabled woman from execution fails in the courts. My comfortable assumption that America is a land where freedom and safety are a given becomes more questionable at each failure.
What does life mean in 2005? What purpose will the world allow the living to give it? What is its worth?
The criteria that seem to be emerging here are beauty, intelligence, wealth and fame, or more specifically the lack of it. If Terri were a raving beauty, her pictures on the web would generate public sympathy. If Terri had the intelligence of a Stephen Hawking, her inability to speak clearly would be dismissed. If Terri had the fame of a Christopher Reeve her wheelchair would be a badge of courage. If Terri had the wealth of a Franklin Roosevelt, her disabilities would never be exposed to the public eye.
Terri has none of these things, yet a Pope pleads for her survival. Terri, who has none of the attributes the world values, is known around the world today. Terri is riveting the attention of our world on euthanasia in a way that we could not have forseen, and therefore Terri is glorifying God in a stupendous way. If Terri is executed, the blinders will be off for all of us who have tried to change the execution order. Now we will know that freedom and right to life are a thing of the past, and it is only a matter of time until the next category of people are designated to join the fetus and disabled categories.
Only religion gives meaning to Terri’s life. Only by looking at Terri through God’s eyes does she have infinite worth. America has dismissed her as someone who doesn’t count, but God trumped the American courts and told the world that she matters. Who would have ever thought that a mentally disabled woman in a Florida hospice would become known in Japan? The ways of God are not the ways of men, but man has decided that the ways of God no longer matter.
There is something else that Terri has taught me. I have often wondered how the holocaust could have happened. How could Christians in Germany have witnessed the trains and the camps and done nothing. I no longer wonder. Terri has shown me in microcosm that I could be—would be—no different from the Germans. I would have believed in the system. At most I would have spoken my disapproval. But when words failed, I would have continued repeating them and done nothing else. If a government is able to keep its populace talking, it matters not that much what they say. So long as they take no action, the government can do whatever it likes, including internment in labor camps and execution of anyone who becomes defined as no longer of consequence--defined by whatever criteria that government chooses to assign.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
