The Anchoress

Fighting for Dear Life by Schindler Attorney David Gibbs.

Published by Bethany House, this looks pretty good. I’ll try to read it this week and give you my take, assuming yer interested. You can order it through this button, too.

Benedict Blog reports an another case that is very similar to Terri Schiavo’s case, but which turned out quite differently.

In the case of Borenstein v. Simonson, Judge Martin E. Ritholtz reasoned that food and water are not “medical treatments” but “supportive care, no different from washing, turning or grooming a dying patient.” As the patient was an Orthodox Jew, the judge applied Judaic reason to the case:

From a Halachic perspective, a persistent vegetative state and Alzheimer’s disease, are not terminal conditions, per se, despite the fact that they are progressive, irreversible and inevitably result in death. Patients with these illnesses deserve the same full range of treatment that is made available to any other patient.

I might add that Judge George W. Greer had no sensitivity to Terri Schiavo’s religion or he might have noticed that John Paul II had said essentially the same thing on the issue of feeding tubes. But one never did have a sense the Greer was looking at Terri as a living woman.

The post at Benedict’sBlog is really quite excellent and I urge you to go read the whole thing.

While we’re on the subject of Terri Schiavo, reader Hope points to this really outstanding piece by Joan Didion, The Case of Terri Schaivo. Didion puts out a very professional effort with an absolute minimum of commentary beyond the facts as she was able to put them together. It is a must read. Something to keep in the hard drive, in fact.

THIS is interesting.

LONDON (CNS) — In a show of religious unity, a Catholic bishop and an Anglican bishop commemorated the death of the first English martyr of the Protestant Reformation.

“We salute the courage and discernment of those who said ‘no,’” he said. “We are honoring martyrs who deserve to be remembered with thanksgiving by the whole church.”

What makes this especially interesting, to me, is not simply the unusual aspect of an Anglican bishop honoring a Catholic saint, but the strange synchronicity of this story breaking on the same day we see The New Republic feature a story by Ross Douthat which does some serious damage to the meme that “liberals and progressives can save the Church.”

The election of Benedict XVI, at least in the Western press, is being interpreted primarily as a blow to liberal Catholicism–the Catholicism that has endured a kind of exile since the late 1960s, when it became clear that the post-Vatican II renovation in Church teaching was not to be as sweeping as many hoped. For some, this exile has meant formally abandoning the Church; for most, though, it has meant remaining within it, waiting first for Paul VI to die, and then John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI, and all the while insisting–often from major op-ed pages and tenured positions at Catholic universities–that all of the Church’s difficulties, from declining vocations to dwindling mass attendance to the sex-abuse scandals, would be solved if only Catholicism were to become more in step with the modern world.

The Episcopal Church offers the most striking example of this phenomenon, since it would seem to embody everything that a Garry Wills or a Maureen Dowd would like Catholicism to be–the liturgy and tradition, that is, without the sexual prohibitions and inconvenient dogmas. Yet in an era when John Paul II supposedly alienated so many otherwise faithful Catholics, it’s Episcopalianism, not Catholicism, that’s been hemorrhaging members, dropping from over 3.5 million American communicants in 1965 to under 2.5 million today. Far from making itself more appealing and more relevant, the Episcopal Church’s reforms seemed to have decreased its ranks in the United States.

He points out that it is precisely those liberal ideas being promoted incessantly by the press and the left which are destroying the Church of England.

(H/T to Fr. Ethan who gives us a picture, as well. Here we see a procession of Women Priests, Church of England. That front one is pretty scary and what IS that thing she’s carrying? A crozier? With a feminine figure on it? Can anyone see?)

And that point is being made even as this story reinforces further the reality which the progressives would choose to ignore: that where Orthodoxy is embraced, seminaries are bursting:

Two patterns were apparent from the statistics:

2. The rate of ordinations of diocesan priests in orthodox dioceses shows a strong upward trend, while the rate in progressive dioceses, relatively low four decades ago, continues to decline. In orthodox dioceses, there were 34 ordinations of diocesan priests per million active Catholics in 1986, and 53 in 1996 - an increase of more than 50 percent. In progressive dioceses, the rate was 16 in 1986, and only 11 in 1996 - a one-third decrease.

News that just hasn’t been getting out there, isn’t it? H/T RomanCatholicblog.com.

And all of this, of course, is going on as we observe the two-week-long construction of the latest meme: Those Damn Christians are Dangerous and they Want to Take Over the World. Or, THEOCRATS ARE THE NEW NEO-CONS for short. Having been sick, I’m late to the party, but while I was forced to lay on the couch, I did manage to flip by a few news stations (I hate to watch news unless its breaking and its NOT about runaway brides, Michael Jackson, American Idol, etc) and come away with the understanding that this meme is transparently being constructed right before our eyes. Somewhere, the left must have a giant fax center with an Orwellian Daily Meme Constructor that prints out:

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Euthanasia is Honoring Life
Good Christians are Nazis
Good Humanists are the new Christians

Or something. And then all the usual suspects go scurrying to their stations to get busy constructing the meme. Hence we have the excellent writer Christopher Hitchens, who has never met a religion that didn’t make him vomit on his keyboard and call it an essay, slap down his gin glass and belch out “Something has got to be done about these Christians! Urp!”

He’s angered Dirty Harry, a man who has never struck me as a religious fanatic, who has slapped down an equally angry glass of something and declared, “Oh yeah? Well, then screw it, I”M A THEOCRAT!”

I’m tired of this. I’ve been thinking about this “theocrat” meme the left has been so busily constructing these last two weeks, and I think the left is merely doing exactly what Howard Dean said they would do, the very thing the left and the press found so “despicable” two months ago, until it became politically expedient for the left to do it: They are “USING SCHIAVO.”

I mean, all of this could not be more transparent. When Republicans (and a number of heavy-duty leftists, like Ralph Nader, as well as a number of Democrats) tried to prevent Terri Schiavo from being starved to death, they were (we were told) “using” Schiavo. It’s BAD to do that. It’s bad to exploit the Schiavo tragedy, unless you are a liberal in which case the whole matter may be used as a bludgeoning tool against the “extremist, over-reaching” religious right. By re-focusing the entire Schiavo story into a “extremists vs mainstreamist” meme, you get to more or less take Terri and her humanity out of the picture, which immediately (always) strengthens the left (that’s why babies are “fetuses” and “clumps of tissue” and abortions are always a “choice” and never, never an invasive act of violent dismemberment performed within a woman’s actual, living body).

The religious right did not “overreach” it simply did all it could to save a woman’s life, while working against a machine and culture of death that somehow NEEDED Terri to die. This re-framing by the media and the left is literally a re-write of history, with a good dose of scary-ghost-stories thrown in. Don Feder says it better than I. The papers are full of crap (yes, just plain crap) like this article from this silly woman who would very likely tell a Christian not to get offended by The Da Vinci Code because, “it’s just fiction,” but who has no problem using another piece of fiction to give gullible people the willies. Her part of the construction: These Christians are BAD for America! Just LOOK at these Left Behind books!

Yawn.

But still…weirdly…even as the meme is being constructed, it is being deconstructed. While the Terri Schiavo story is being spun away from the story of a woman whose husband would not fix her wheelchair or allow her ANY SORT of recovery therapy as he fought and fought and fought to make her go away, America reads about this firefighter, who was lucky enough to have a spouse and a doctor still committed to his recovery and not to his death.

Even as the meme of the Thundering Theocrats is being promoted, we read all of those articles above, suggesting that the power the progressives insist they have in numbers is an illusion.

I think it is staggeringly significant that all of this “theocracy” talk comes within weeks of the recent events in Rome. I think the left and the press saw everything leading up to JPII’s death - including how so many people found the connect between his being allowed to simply die when it was his time, (and for a short while, with a feeding tube) as opposed to Terri Schiavo’s being FORCED to die. Then the funeral. Then the election of the most hated Benedict…it’s all of a piece.

When Terri Schiavo died, we all knew it was not over. Indeed not. Things are still moving and shaking. God has his hand in all things. When Jesus was asked whether a man was blind because of his sin, or his parents, he responded neither…that the man’s blindness had been permitted so that God’s Glory might be demonstrated through him. Then he healed the man’s blindness with humble mud and humbler spittle. God has a funny way of winning, but he always does.

Perhaps the Culture of Death believed it had won a significant battle in claiming her life. Perhaps it did. But perhaps not. Perhaps it is poised to lose the war. And perhaps that’s what all of this fuss and fury is all about.

I’m tired. Feeling a little stronger (thank you all for your prayers - I do believe they are helping. This is the first time I have been able to sit up for any length of time and not feel lightheaded and clammy and sick…though I am tired out just from the rant)

Clearly, I am still not coherent enough to write a lot…I know my prose is rocky and my reason is fuzzy and disjointed…and as you can probably tell, I am cranky, to boot.

But I just hadda get all that out!

UPDATE: Jeanette has a really good link to a piece at World Magazine which points out just how little REAL information on Terri Schiavo made it out through the press.

Maybe I need a tonic, or something…am I reading this press release correctly?

Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation has harsh words for the former Mrs. Felos’ attempts to capitalize on Terri

In a press release issued through PR Web, titled “Lawyer Who Presented CT Scan & Medical Evidence in Court Analyzes Autopsy Results in Terri Schiavo Case” Ms. d’Angelis (former wife of Attorney to Michael Schiavo, George Felos) claims she will be available to interpret the anticipated Medical Examiner’s report on the late Terri Schiavo.

Statement of Pamela Hennessy, Media Coordinator for the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation: “The former Mrs. Felos is not a doctor, a surgeon, a pathologist or even an orderly. She is a massage therapist. Certainly, she can lend absolutely no analysis or insight into the results of the Medical Examiner’s report. Rather, she can only recant what her former husband suggests as the truth to Terri’s condition. Medical analysis is best left to medical practitioners and not lawyers.”

Is there anything about this case, from start-to-finish that isn’t utterly strange and outside-the-norm?

Meanwhile, Jeanette links to an interesting discussion on feeding tubes and where we are headed with them.

Recall that the ABC and CBS polls were showing that 68% of Americans were “in favor of letting Terri Schiavo die…” Other polls also reflected a general acquiesence on the part of most Americans as to whether Terri should “be allowed to die” or not.

Recall that the questions they asked asked the question in a very specific way,which I am tired so I’m just going to paraphrase for now: “Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegatative state, and has been for 15 years, she is in a coma and will never recover, should she be taken off life support?”

Well…sure…you ask a question like that…you’ll get a number like 68% saying, “yes, let the poor woman die…”

Then Zogby asks the question a different way:

“If a disabled person is not terminally ill, not in a coma, and not being kept alive on life support, and they have no written directive, should or should they not be denied food and water,” the poll asked.

A whopping 79 percent said the patient should not have food and water taken away while just 9 percent said yes.

We all knew it, didn’t we? We knew that if how a question is phrased has everything to do with how it is answered.

David Limbaugh writes: There was NEVER any doubt in my mind that if the public knew even a fraction of the facts in the Schiavo case, including that we were talking about removing a feeding tube, not a respirator, from a person who is not terminally ill, they would not say they favored killing her. I said as much on a radio interview yesterday. Rush has been saying it non-stop. The poll questions have been skewed. Well, now Zogby releases a poll, after Terri’s death, after having asked the right questions and determined that 79% of the respondents said Terri should not have her food and water taken away and only 9% said she should. This is staggering, but unresponsive.

The press ran with those first polls - they were reported everywhere. “This is what America thinks should happen!” We heard. “President Bush, Governor Bush and the congress are way outside the mainstream!”

I haven’t seen these Zogby poll results anywhere but at Lifenews and on the blogs. If anyone else has seen ‘em on tv, let me know, ok? I’d like to give what my son Buster calls “mad props” to the MSM outlet that actually reports on this poll.

Michelle Malkin has great links, including one to an angry Pat Caddell, spitting fury at what he considered to be essentially push-polls.

Keep this in mind the next time the media offer up a poll - any poll - as evidence of anything, anything at all. Then think for yourself.

Reposted this date due to numerous requests:

Suppose you are alive, but paralysed. Your mind seems to be in working order, but you can’t say much. You’re happy to see your family who come to visit you all the time, and you do make every effort you can to respond to your surroundings. You enjoy the sunshine in the morning, when your nurses open the curtains, and you like the sound of rain falling upon the window, and at night, you can see the moon travel across the sky, as you watch and wonder. You like to blow kisses and receive them.

Some would say you don’t have much of a life. Others would say, well, maybe not…but it is the life you HAVE, and it is your own, and the YOU that exists within that limited life is still the essential YOU, the absolute YOU…the YOU that God loved into being. You’re still there. You’re just not quite able to come out, all the way.

Now… suppose your husband, who once vowed to be faithful through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, has decided it’s all too much for him - that he wants a life outside of what he can have with you. Hey, he’s only human, who could gainsay it? He’s now got a live-in lover and a couple of kids, and he wants an unencumbered life - he wants the life he wants.

And he has decided that even though he has the life he wants, it would be wrong to simply divorce you and go on with his new life. No…he thinks that even though you are not actually dying…you probably should die. Your death, you see, would be a better and more compassionate thing than your being allowed to continue living…even though your family is more than willing to see you through to the end of your life.

Since you are not on a respirator that could simply be removed, and you do not have a fatal disease that will eventually take your life, since, as I say, you are not actually dying…a decision has to be made as to just how your life may be effectively ended.

So, your husband is working to have your feeding stopped, so that you can starve to death. You can lie in your bed and feel increasingly hungry and thirsty and weak. You can feel abandoned. You can feel the utter cruelty of unnecessary, willfull deprivation, for it is not as if you are on a deserted island somewhere, utterly alone and without aid or companionship, where your paralysis assists in your natural demise…no, you’re in a civilized country in which the means to help you stay alive are quite available…only withheld. Because your life isn’t meaningful enough.

You are not regarded, by many, as a creature capable of comprehension and understanding. However, in your agony of starvation, you will be be permitted to understand that your life is unimportant. You’ll be allowed to understand that your death is desirable.

But since you won’t be able to express yourself, or rail against those feelings, or beg for mercy…you will have to simply endure the helpless stares of your family and friends, as they watch you hunger and thirst, unable - by law - to respond to your dire circumstances.

Imagine your name is Terri Schiavo. And this is your life. And you may begin to die on February 22, 2005.

The bloggers, we are told, are mouth-breathing, unethical, mob-ruled, bible-thumping cretins. They are cold, swarming, scheming, unsophisticated and incapable of really understanding the proper use and function of modern informational tools, which they are using to tear down lives and wreck havoc on all of the enlightened thinking of the last 40 years.

And right now, they are working together to try to save the life of Terri Schiavo and - in doing so - perhaps save the life of your husband or wife, or daughter or son, should they ever be in a situation where they’re-not-dying-but-others-sure-wish-they-would. Greg, at What Attitude Problem has testimonial excerpts from Fr. Frank Pavone, has visited Terri. The indefagitable LaShawn Barber says: “Bloggers caused enough ruckus to topple someone in Big Media, so let’s see what we can do to save a life.”

If you have a blog, write about Terri Schavo, and direct people here. And urge action. Urge your readers to call their local media, their congressional rep, their senators. Write to editors of newspapers demanding another look into this issue. If enough people make noise, Terri’s feeding will not be allowed to quiety be discontinued.

Remember what Schindler’s assistant told him as he was compiling lists of Jews to save from the trains heading into Auschwitz: Who saves a life, saves the world, entire. And saving Terri’s life may keep our nation and our culture from slip-sliding into a dark and irredeemable place.

UPDATE: For a better understand of what Terri’s physical state is, please go here. Dory at Wittenberg Gate has more.

Lest I be accused again of “playing the heartstrings”, let me say that having had a family member, severely brain-damaged after a stroke, who nevertheless defied many “experts” predictions, the one think I do know is that we don’t know everything, particularly when it’s about the inner workings of the human mind and soul. As quoted in the above-referenced site: “Terri’s behavior does not meet the medical or statutory definition of persistent vegetative state. Terri responds to stimuli, tries to communicate verbally, follows limited commands, laughs or cries in interaction with loved ones, physically distances herself from irritating or painful stimulation and watches loved ones as they move around her. None of these behaviors are simple reflexes and are, instead, voluntary and cognitive. Though Terri has limitations, she does interact purposefully with her environment.”

It seems to me this woman would understand that she was in fact, starving and thirsting to her death. And to me that seems unspeakably cruel.

I am so sorry that when you died, your parents and siblings were not permitted to be with you.

…the parents and their two other children “were denied access at the moment of her death. They’ve been requesting, as you know, for the last hour to try to be in there and they were denied access by Michael Schiavo. They are in there now, praying at her bedside.”

It is completely and utterly heartbreaking to read this.

Be at peace, in glory and wholeness. And flights of angels lead you to your rest.

It is not all finished down here. Not by a long shot. But you rest, now.

Let us mourn, but not be discouraged. Let us forgive those who have acted wrongly in our name, even as we beg forgiveness from the Author of Life for whatever failures and delinquencies on our own parts have contributed to the culture of death. We are all sinners, and have fallen short; and the wages of sin truly are death. Let us resolve that Terri’s death shall not have been in vain. In her name, let reform and renewal be our undoubted mission. Let us now, even in the depths of sorrow, rededicate ourselves to our ancient creed, affirming that every human being, as a creature fashioned in the divine image, possesses a profound, inherent, and equal worth and dignity–a worth and dignity that it is the high duty of the officers and institutions of constitutional republican government to respect and defend. Robert P. George.

LaShawn has the round-up of obits and eulogies.

Dirty Harry is posting a tape of Terri Schiavo responding to her father, a tape made just two years ago. Listen to it here.

Terri is clearly hearing and responding to her father. This is heartbreaking.

While you’re at it, if you can bear it, after listening to Terri and understanding once again that she is being made to die, for NO GOOD REASON, listen to Bill O’ Reilly’s rant against the ACLU. I don’t usually watch him, but I’m glad I watched it. I’d been ignoring the ACLU for a while, but clearly it’s time to pay attention to them, again.

You might want to just hang at Jackson’s Junction for a while. They’ve got interesting stuff there.

Ed Morrissey serves up a furious helping of completely correct and justified righteous indignation at the arrogant and condescending tone of the final opinion rendered by the Eleventh Circuit.

Sez the court:

“In resolving the Schiavo controversy, it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people our Constitution [sic].”

Sez Ed:

Talk about judicial arrogance! Not only did the Eleventh Circuit openly disregard the law written by Congress, this justice arrogantly tells the other equal branches that the only branch guaranteeing a free people is the one not accountable to the will of the electorate. Bear in mind that none of the courts that reviewed this case after the passage of the emergency legislation found it unconstitutional; that at least would have put the court on record. Instead, the judiciary simply and contemptuously disregarded a law which to this moment remains legal and valid.

But don’t read me, on this. Read Ed and then read other folks who are much smarter and better educated than I. Start with Musing Minds, over here - I’m frankly not smart enough to comment on this ruling except to say that it seemed incredibly, unspeakably cruel for the Circuit to even agree to hear this last appeal and give Terri Schiavo’s family any sort of hope. I mean…show of hands, please, who among us did not know last night what today’s ruling would be? Almost seems like the court was toying with the Schindlers, simply because they could.

I’ve linked to Dr. Boyle a few times already. He’s been getting increasingly antsy and angry over the Schiavo case and now he has thrown down a gauntlet.

I have seen several neurologists — in the printed media and on television — put up a Representative CT of the brain of a normal 25 year old female and contrast this with Terri Schiavo’s CT. This is a totally spurious comparison. No one is disputing that Terri Schiavo does not have the CT of a 25 year old female.

If the neurologist can be right 6 out of 10 times he wins the $100,000.

Pretty interesting…

Meanwhile Matteo over at Cartago Delenda Est is angry, too - the angriest I’ve ever read him.

…the news is the news, and that’s what this blog is about. When I saw last night that the 11th Circuit (for whatever reason) was going to, you know, at some point, maybe get around to hearing arguments about whether or not to consider the future option of allowing the possibility of legalizing the potential reinsertion of the tube, I have to be honest. The gorge started to rise in my throat. Why’d they change their mind? Was it seeing some far left icons like Jackson, Nader, and Hentoff going against them? Was it because they’ve finally started to realize that in addition to Terri, they are euthanizing the legitimacy and prestige of the Judiciary? Was it because they are starting to see that this case is an unmitigated disaster for the left?

I’m a pretty level-headed guy, but I’m starting to feel the urge to puke.

I can’t tell you how unusual it is for Matteo to write something like that penultimate line.