Monthly Archives: March 2005

Out of Left Field or Out of Touch With Reality?

I’m less enthused about Jesse Jackson’s public support of Terri Schiavo than Jerry is. The reverend is, in my opinion, a media whore and skipper of the "rent a mob" crew and Al Sharpton is his first mate. Want to present a lot of angry faces and voices for the cameras? Need someone to yell "Oppression!" with you? Is your bombast not bombastic enough? If you’re not concerned about nitty-gritty details like respectability, credibility, and sincerity, they’re your men. If I found out either of those clowns supported a cause dear to me, I’d ask God to grant them the good sense to keep their mouths shut, at least when reporters are present.

Right Out of Left Field

Some folks have wondered what the Terri Schiavo case will mean for the conservative
cause, including Ales Rarus regular, DLW
(see March 28, 2005); perhaps we should pay a little more attention to leftists
like the Rev.
Jesse Jackson
and Nat
Hentoff
before labeling Terri’s cause a right-wing one. Or even those disability
activists that get mentioned from time to time, but have largely been ignored in
media coverage. (Maybe they don’t fit in with this left-versus-right template that
the media chose?)

Pro-life Religious Community for Men Being Founded

Fr. Pavone of Priests for Life has some very good news to share with us for Holy Week:

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, officially announced today that he is founding a pro-life community dedicated to the formation and training of priests, deacons, brothers and seminarians who will devote themselves fully to the proclamation of the Gospel of Life. This initiative will be based in the diocese of Amarillo, Texas, under the authority and stewardship of Bishop John W. Yanta…his society of apostolic life, while drawing on the spirit and mission of the Priests for Life organization, will be a completely separate entity, known as Missionaries of the Gospel of Life.

Fr. Pavone announced that men considering joining this community can attend a discernment retreat he will conduct on June 24-26 in Amarillo. There will also be a seminariansd pro-life conference in Newark, NJ from August 16-21, during which Fr. Pavone will also discuss the new community. Those interested in the community may contact vocations@priestsforlife.org.

The full article can be found here. While I’m not religious community material anymore (by virtue of marriage), I’m very excited to learn about this community, and look forward to seeing how they do! Women already have a pro-life religious community, the excellent Sisters of Life in NYC.

The Politics of Life and Death or Right and Left?

Michael Gallaugher at Christian Conservative really hit a nerve with this post about Terri Schiavo. I’ve never seen so many comments generated from so little text. Some of the comments really took me by surprise. Not only were commenters ill- or misunformed about Terri’s condition, they also showed a disturbing inability to reason logically. Here’s a sampling.

"Err on the side of life? They have been stuffing her from a tube for 15 years! You are writing about this as if there is some dispute. The woman’s cortex is gone. All that is left is a brain stem. Terri is gone and she has a right to be allowed for her brain stem to die as well. A whole boatload of neurologists and judges have invariably –invariably– found the same thing. She’s gone."
Public Theologian

Invariably, eh? Perhaps this information would change his mind.

"This is a fascist religious conspiracy to take away Michael Schiavo’s rights to fulfill his wife’s wishes."
– POed Lib

Really? And here I thought it was an attempt to save a women from being treated like the living dead and forced to waste away painfully.

"Excellent opinion, Christian Conservative. We liberals are completely for the ‘Err on the side of life’ mentality." [Unless that life is on the wrong side of a cervix. – Funky]

"Perhaps we should have ‘erred on the side of life’ before sending 1500 US soldiers to their deaths in Iraq, along with an estimated 100,000 Iraqis."

"Perhaps we should have erred on the side of life with the 152 executions he allowed as Governor of Texas."

"Or perhaps the countless patients in Texas whose tubes were removed, simply because the families could not afford the health care — against the wishes of the family."

"Maybe it should be extended to the millions of Americans without health insurance."

"Perhaps slashing Medicaid funding in the proposed budget would be reversed."

"Perhaps."

Nick Davis

Can you say "red herring", boys and girls? Does support for Terri necessarily imply support for the war in Iraq, the death penalty, the Texas Futile Care Law, or slashing Medicaid funding? No. Just because President Bush may be acting hypocritically by supporting Terri, doesn’t mean we all are. I don’t like President Bush and I didn’t vote for him (either time). It’s high time liberals learn that sometimes "discrimination" is a good thing.

discrimination – 1. The act of discriminating. 2. The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment.

"So you’re going to come out against Bush’s elective Iraq invasion, alll of the executions that he signed off on, the dead people who are dead because they could afford health insurance, and the the texas law that Bush signed that makes it possible for hospitals to cut life supprot for people who can no longer pay?"

"(I’ll be holding my breath while you think about it)"

– jri

Absolutely. I neither like nor voted for Bush. I still want to see Terri Schiavo live. Try not to spontaneously combust as you digest that.

BTW, You can stop holding your breath now.

"I find it ironic that same folks pushing for Shiavo’s "right to life" are the same folks who go on and on about the ‘sanctity of marriage’ – yet they’re stomping on Michael Shiavo’s marital rights. Can’t have it both ways."
– Jinx

Michael doesn’t give a rat’s behind about his marital rights. His girlfriend and their two children are evidence of that.

"Matthew 25 is one of my favorites – to me it summarizes elegantly what it means to be Christian. It also summarizes the beauty of liberalism. We propose direct aid for the hungry, the thirsty, for strangers, for the naked and for the imprisoned. The Adam Smith approach does not do it for us. We admit that it fails and has failed for over 200 years to address the needs of the poor. Conservatives tend to argue that the poor are lazy and need to get to work, or that they will benefit indirectly from government support for the very wealthy. I believe that the conservative view is in conflict with this scriptural teaching."

Duf

You’ll get little or no argument from me on those points. Now tell me why Terri must die painfully at her husband’s whim.

"I believe that there should be a national statute to protect all citizens from the horror that Terri Schiavo has been experiencing for 15 years. In the absence of clear instructions to the contrary by the patient, the maintenance of life by artificial means such as tube feeding or a respirator should be limited to a maximum of one year unless a judge can be convinced that the patient has a genuine chance of recovery to a state in which they can communicate their wishes."

– tgibbs

Tell that to Sarah Scantlin and others like her.

Don’t get me wrong. Some of the comments are very insightful, especially those by a fellow called Jinx. I encourage my readers, who have demonstrated their superb reasoning and debating skills on a number of occasions, to weigh in on the issues raised over there.

On a related note, if you’d like to see how these mostly civil comments from the Left can be turned ugly, read the ones left at this Hullabaloo post. Some of these individuals must have been foaming at the mouth while writing them.

Life, Death, and God’s Sovereignty

Theomorph, our resident atheist, has asked an astute question in a comment to yesterday’s post about Terri Schiavo.

"If suicide or murder are wrong because they contravene God’s alleged desires for the course of a life, how can you not apply the same reasoning to technological attempts to extend a life in the face of otherwise insurmountable difficulties? I.e., if a person would die without medical intervention, how is medical intervention also not a contravention of God’s apparent desires? If "rights come from God and God alone," then the right to live also comes from God and God alone, does it not? How does one ascertain when God has removed that right, beyond which point all human efforts to maintain life are in opposition to the will or desire of God?"

How do we reconcile God’s sovereignty with modern medicine? Are those who renounce medical and pharmaceutical technology in favor of healing by prayer actually right? How do we decide the will of God? When do life-saving techniques stop being appropriate efforts and start being contrary to God’s wishes?

What say you, Christian readers of my blog?