NATURAL AND WELCOME VS. INSANELY GHOULISH:

Schiavo Case Highlights Catholic-Evangelical Alliance (LAURIE GOODSTEIN, 3/24/05, NY Times)

The powerful outcry over Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose case has provoked a national debate over whether she should live or die, is a testament to the growing alliance of conservative Roman Catholics and evangelicals who have found common cause in the "culture of life" agenda articulated by Pope John Paul II.

In their fight to keep their daughter alive, Ms. Schiavo's parents, who are Catholics, have been backed by an ad hoc coalition of Catholic and evangelical lobbyists, street organizers and legal advisers like the Rev. Frank Pavone, the Catholic priest who runs a group called Priests for Life and evangelical Protestants like Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, and the Rev. Pat Mahoney of the National Clergy Council.

The struggle is only the latest indication of a strengthening religious alliance between denominations that were once bitterly divided. Evangelical leaders say they frequently lean on Catholic intellectuals like Robert George at Princeton University and the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the journal First Things, to help them frame political issues theologically.

An increasing number of Catholics hold crucial staff positions in some of the religious conservative groups that lobby Washington. And conservative Catholics and evangelicals meet weekly in Virginia with a broad array of right-leaning lobbyists.

"The idea of building a culture that values human life is a Catholic articulation, but it echoes in the hearts of many people, evangelicals and others," said William L. Saunders Jr., director of the Center for Human Life and Bioethics at the Family Research Council in Washington.

"It was articulated by John Paul II, who is a great hero to pro-life people, regardless of their church," said Mr. Saun

Even more interesting is the emergence of a vocal Jewish contingent that's pro-life, Catching the Moon (Marc Gellman, March 22, 2005, Newsweek)

The three facts all parties to the Schiavo case agree are true are that she is alive, she is innocent and she is mute. Everything else is in dispute. One group is arguing that rational individuals can decide to refuse medical treatment, even healing treatments, if they are unhappy about the quality of their life. Terri's husband is saying that Terri wanted this. The other side is arguing that she did not want this and that her parents are willing to care for her. I believe the issue is what we as a culture will do with living, innocent, mute people in our midst, and no court can rule on that.

In many right-to-die cases, the patient is on life-support systems, so all that needs to be done to allow them to die is to remove these medical obstacles to death. However, in this case Terri Schiavo is not on any life support systems. In this case, in order to live she only requires hydration and nutrition; and it is a big stretch for many people to label food and water extraordinary means. It is one thing to let a person die in peace who is already dying. It is one thing to remove an obstacle to death. It is quite another to cause death. When you add in her parents' willingness to assume the financial and emotional burden of her care, the insistence of her husband that he be given the right to starve his wife to death just seems insanely ghoulish to many people who are otherwise in favor of a person's right to die. Death, they argue—and I agree—is not always an insult or a betrayal. Death can be a natural and welcome release from pain and suffering. We now face the frightening possibility of modern medicine, motivated more by a defensive fear of lawsuits than the Hippocratic oath of “first do no harm,” stopping us from crossing over when it is our time. But this obviously is not Terri Schiavo's time.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 23, 2005 8:17 PM