The Discerning Texan has composed a piece on Terri Schaivo that includes a summation of my thoughts of the watershed nature of this situation upon our culture.
"Sherri Eros, MD, summed up well what happened today:
"To a corrupt nation, Terri Schiavo is a living, breathing, thinking, willing, loving rebuke and provocation. She exposes all that is worst in us, the lawlessness, crassness, hard-heartedness, and viciousness that we see almost everywhere around us. In her silence she elegantly refutes the shameless fraud of the bioethics experts, the callousness of the Death Doctors and the Right-to-Die enthusiasts, the tyranny of an unchecked judiciary, the utter depravity of the secular humanists. In her debilitated state, nearly squeezed dry of life, she filled the world with her voiceless eloquence.
One last observation now that she has died. Due to the pall of unreality enveloping these events, those actively witnessing Terri Schiavo’s struggle cannot but feel a deep unease and conflictedness, sensing that on the one hand the world ought to have come to a dead stop until this immense evil was undone, and feeling on the other hand that her progression toward death was inexorable--that the forces of death were not about to halt for even a second, and we were utterly powerless to intervene. This state of unsettledness reveals to us that we, not Terri Schiavo, are the ones in a "locked-in" state, with minds and wills imprisoned in paralyzed bodies, powerless to find the right words and actions to effectively intervene or cry for help, unable to prevent the monstrous torture-killing that occurred right in front of our eyes."
The one thing that will be said about Terri Schiavo for a very long time was that she will have had a major impact on the course of our culture, and probably even the course of our future government, particularly the judiciary. That's not a bad legacy to leave behind. Rest in peace, Terri. You deserve it."
To paraphrase Dostoyevsky: If there is no God, all things are permitted.
1 comment:
One last observation now that she has died. Due to the pall of unreality enveloping these events, those actively witnessing Terri Schiavo’s struggle cannot but feel a deep unease and conflictedness,
That really is a crux - it was NOT in my opinion, Terri's struggle.
Without the intervention of medical technology Terri would probably have died some 15 or 17 years ago.
The struggle has been, HAS ALWAYS BEEN, between two family factions with different beliefs in what was the right thing to be done.
Poor Terri, who knows what manner of hell she was living in those 15 years? Who really knows the truth of what Terri Schiavo WANTED.
The TRUTH is that no one will ever really know.
Terri Schiavo should never have become a political issue. Terri Schiavo should never have become a judicial issue.
The real PROBLEM behind all this is that are ability to keep people alive (when 20, 30 or 50 years ago they would have died) has been accompanied by an increasing unwillingness for people to accept death as an alternative for the dying.
John Paul perhaps can provide the light back to DEATH WITH DIGNITY.
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