Clarity Imperative in Distinguishing Right From Wrong

My fellow Catholics in the Public Square co-editor David has reported on the U.S. delegation to the installation Mass for Pope Benedict XVI, noting that Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) would head the five members representing his brother President George W. Bush.

Our readers may find Gov. Bush's observations, as reported by Catholic News Service, of interest:

Catholic politicians can balance guidance from the Vatican with a commitment to following secular laws, said the head of the U.S. delegation to Pope Benedict XVI's April 24 inauguration Mass.

"I take advice from the leader of my church very seriously," Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida said at a press conference the afternoon before the Mass.

"I also have a duty to uphold the laws of the state. I don't believe this necessarily has to be in conflict," he said, adding that religious leaders have a right to take a stand on political issues.

"This helps not just Catholic governors, but others as well," said Bush, who in 1996 became a Catholic, which is the faith of his wife, Columba.

Gov. Bush indicated that he was confident that the new Pope would continue his predecessor's emphasis on human dignity.

The dialogue about creating a culture of life is one that needs to be ongoing,and religious leaders, particularly the pope, can play an important role for us to realize the value of life. It's not just related to abortion. It relates to end-of-life issues as well.

It's wonderful to have moral leaders that are not ambiguous about what's right and what's wrong.

I'm sure that our readers will agree with me that it would also be wonderful to have political leaders that reflected the same clarity.

The Final Hours of Terri Schiavo

Terri Schiavo's Final Hours: An Eyewitness Account, by Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life and President of the National Pro-life Religious Council:

Brothers and sisters to describe the way she looked as peaceful is a total distortion of what I saw. Here now was a person, who for thirteen days had no food or water. She was, as you would expect, very drawn in her appearance as opposed to when I had seen her before. Her eyes were open but they were going from one side to the next, constantly oscillating back and forth, back and forth. The look on her face (I was staring at her for three and a half-hours) I can only describe as a combination of fear and sadness . . . a combination of dreaded fear and sadness.

Her mouth was open the whole time. It looked like it was frozen open. She was panting rapidly. It wasn't peaceful in any sense of the word. She was panting as if she had just run a hundred miles. But a shallow panting. Her brother Bobby was sitting opposite me. He was on one side of the bed I was on the other facing him. Terri's head in between us and her sister Suzanne was on my left. We sat there and we had a very intense time of prayer. And we were talking to Terri, urging her to entrust herself completely to the Savior. I assured her repeatedly of the love and prayers and concern of so many people.

We held her hand and stroked her head. During those hours, one of the things I did was to chant, in Latin, some of the most ancient hymns of the Church. One of the chants I used was the "Victimae Paschali Laudis," which is the ancient proclamation of the resurrection of Christ. There, as I saw before my eyes the deadly work of the Culture of Death, I proclaimed the victory of life. "Life and death were locked in a wondrous struggle," the hymn declares. "Life's Captain died, but now lives and reigns forevermore!"

And then we had just times of silence . . . just sitting there in silence trying to absorb what was happening.

READ THE WHOLE THING, and remember it the next time you hear another dismiss her with the claim "she died peacefully." She was murdered, plain and simple. God have mercy.

Archbishop Chaput

One of the lessons from last year that too many American Catholics still don't want to face is that it's OK to be Catholic in today's public square as long as we don't try to live our beliefs too seriously; as long as we're suitably embarrassed by all those "primitive" Catholic teachings; as long as we shut up about abortion and other sensitive moral issues and allow ourselves to be tutored in the ways of "polite" secular culture by experts who have little or no respect for the Christian faith that guides our lives.

Read the whole thing.

Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act

The House of Represenatives is considering the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act today. If passed and signed into law it will make it a federal crime to transport a minor girl across state lines in order to circumvent a state's abortion notification law. The bill is likely to pass tonight. More on the bill here.

A note on this legislation and a Catholic rep from Missouri from the blog Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam:

Clay will switch vote, back abortion bill

WASHINGTON - Saying Democrats should be more flexible on hot-button social issues, Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, said Tuesday he will switch his vote on a key abortion bill set for a House vote this week. The measure would make it a crime to help a minor evade a state parental notification law.

"I'm going to follow my church leadership and vote in favor of this bill," said Clay, who is Roman Catholic...Clay said he hears "all the time" from his priest on the issue...

Because of this first step, Rep. Clay should be thanked for doing the right thing. As a fellow Catholic and our brother in Christ, he should be encouraged, in charity and hope, to continue in his journey toward the truth. And, as always, we should keep praying that our Lord will continue to bless him and provide the enlightenment necessary to convert his will and touch his heart regarding life issues.

I couldn't agree more!

UPDATE: Looks like Rep Clay changed his mind and voted 'No'. The bill passed nonetheless!

UPDATE: I was viewing the wrong Roll Call! Clay did vote 'Yes'! So did 53 other Democrats.

Democrats reveal plan to reduce abortions

WASHINGTON DC, USA, April 22 (CNA) - Democrats unveiled a policy proposal yesterday, which is intended to reduce the number of abortions in the United States. The proposal, called the "95-10 Initiative", includes 15 different policy programs that, when fully funded and implemented, are expected to reduce abortions by 95 percent over 10 years.

The policy proposal strongly promotes the adoption option. It provides for permanent adoption tax credits, counseling for women with unplanned pregnancies and pregnancy resource centers, where women can receive information about adoption as well as support to carry the baby to term.

Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH), [a Catholic], announced at yesterday’s press conference that he plans to introduce legislation, modeled on the 95-10 Initiative, in Congress soon.

"Our party has made more progress on this issue in the last three months than we have in the last 10 years,” said former congressman and 9-11 Commissioner, Tim Roemer, [another Catholic].

"The 95-10 Initiative is our number-one priority,” said Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats For Life of America, a nonprofit pro-life group that joined politicians at yesterday’s press conference. She said the proposal has been met favorably by both pro-life and pro-choice advocates and elected officials.

Among the elected officials behind the 95-10 Initiative are Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH), Congressman Jerry Costello (D-IL), [yet another Catholic] and Congressman Collin Peterson (D-MN).


Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A national group of pro-life Democrats has joined pro-life Democratic members of Congress, adoption agencies and pregnancy centers unveil a package of legislation designed to significantly reduce abortion in the next 10 years. Democrats for Life of America joined Reps. Tim Ryan (Ohio), Bart Stupak (Michigan) and Lincoln Davis (Tennessee) at a press conference Friday to announce the "95-10 Initiative" -- a plan to reduce abortions 95 percent in the next 10 years. Kristen Day, director of DFLA, said the plan was "a legitimate policy initiative that will actually reduce the number of abortions." She said it "has been met favorably by both pro-life and pro-choice advocates and elected officials." The initiative outlines 17 different policy programs designed to empower and promote women as well as protect unborn children. Some of those include a national toll-free number for pregnancy support, studying why women have abortions, funding daycare on college campuses, increasing funding for domestic violence programs, and making adoption tax credits permanent. Day's group has several Congressional lawmakers on board with the idea, including Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, the only pro-life Democrat in the Senate. "The plan outlined today is a good first step to successfully reduce the rate of abortion by offering alternatives that promote family, promote adoption, and provide education and support for new mothers," Nelson said. In the House, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan said he would soon be introducing the policy package. Read the complete story.

UPDATE: Check out Democrats for Life for more info on "95-10".

Congressional Delegation to attend Installation Mass

The official US delegation to Benedict's installation Mass:

Twenty-one House members left Friday to attend Pope Benedict XVI’s inaugural mass, the second House delegation this month to travel to Rome to witness the transition of leadership in the Catholic Church.

The House also dispatched 27 lawmakers to attend the April 8 funeral of Pope John Paul II. Separately, 14 senators attended the funeral as did an official delegation led by President Bush, his father and former President Clinton.

The White House said Friday that the president’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, would lead a five-member delegation representing the president.

HT to Amy Welborn.

[Archbishop] Burke, pope are aligned on many moral issues, by Tim Townsend. St. Louis Post-Dispatch April 21, 2005.

"We know each other and I am very grateful to him for his encouragement," said Burke in an interview Wednesday. "I have a great deal of respect for him and I can't say how happy I am that he's our new pope."

The bishop and new pope share the same views on many moral and theological issues. For instance, in June, when U.S. bishops released a statement saying lawmakers who consistently supported abortion rights or euthanasia were "cooperating in evil," and could be denied holy Communion - very much Burke's take on the topic - Ratzinger said the statement was "very much in harmony" with his view.

Benedict and Burke despise the creeping influence of secularism on the church, especially in their native continents of Europe and North America. Burke said he believes the re-evangelization of Europe, especially, was probably foremost in the cardinals' minds when they elected Ratzinger pope.

Praise God! (Via Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.

Meanwhile, Diogenes at Catholic World News wonders:

when Pope Benedict XVI issues his first encyclical letter, should we ask to see the whole text, or just rely on Cardinal McCarrick to give us a quick summary?

Dangers of "Living Will" and "Brain Death" Exposed on Florida Talk Show

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

Appearing last night on the David Allen Show, which airs on AM 1320 in Jacksonville, FL, and across the world via the Internet, Dr. Paul Byrne described the dangers of the misnamed "living will," which he said "has nothing to do with living and everything to do with dying."

Dr. Byrne is a neonatologist and physician in practice for more than 30 years. He has authored medical text books on death and dying, and has appeared before numerous state legislatures in defense of life.

An uncompromising opponent of euthanasia, Dr. Byrne presented the medical truth behind the legal fiction of "brain death" and the transplantation of vital organs it was concocted to facilitate.

Returning to the matter of advance directives, the past president of the Catholic Medical Association endorsed CURE's Life Support Directive, as the directive affording the greatest degree of protection to its users.

Supplemental Resources

• You may listen to or download, Allen's interview with Dr. Byrne on the show's website.
• You may request a free copy of the Life Support Directive by e-mailing CURE.

Catholic to be re-considered for 11th Circuit

From Jonathan Adler over on The Corner:

The Senate Judiciary Committee will soon (re)consider the nomination of William Pryor to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. More news on the efforts to confirm Pryor here.

Peggy Noonan on Benedict XVI

Peggy Noonan is a MUST READ today.

The choosing of Benedict XVI, a man who is serious, deep and brave, is a gift. He has many enemies. They imagine themselves courageous and oppressed. What they are is agitated, aggressive, and well-connected.

They want to make sure his papacy begins with a battle. They want to make sure no one gets a chance to love him. Which is too bad because even his foes admit he is thoughtful, eager for dialogue, sensitive, honest.

They want to make sure that when he speaks and writes, the people of the world won't come running.

What to do to help? See his enemies for what they are, and see him for what he is. Read him--he is a writer, a natural communicator of and thinker upon challenging ideas. Listen to him. Consult your internal compass as you listen, and see if it isn't pointing true north.

Look at what he said at the beginning of the papal conclave: It is our special responsibility at this time to be mature, to believe as adults believe. "Being an 'adult' means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties." Being an adult is loving what is true and standing with it.

This isn't radical, or archconservative. And the speaker isn't an enforcer, a cop or a rottweiler. He's a Catholic. Which one would think is a good thing to have as leader of the Catholic Church.

Read the whole thing here.

Point Blank (Round 22): Pundits React to Papal Election

From the pages of Times Against Humanity . . .

"From 'Thank God!' to 'Oh my God!' reactions to Pope Benedict XVI are rolling in from all over," Arts & Letters Daily reports today. Comparisons with the late Pope are common. Our customary half dozen excerpts from the writers listed follow. We've also cited related pieces from the same pens or keyboards, as the case may be.

Dissident Pins Hopes on Post-Conclave Turnabout

The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope comes as an enormous disappointment for all those who hoped for a reformist and pastoral Pope. But we must wait and see, for experience shows that the role of the papacy in the Catholic Church today is so challenging that it can change anyone. Someone who enters the conclave a progressive cardinal can emerge as a conservative (such as Montini—Pope Paul VI), and someone who enters the conclave a conservative cardinal can, indeed, emerge as a progressive (Roncalli—Pope John XXIII). –Hans Kung [original emphasis]

• See also "Cardinal accused of manipulating vote," Sydney Morning Herald, April 13, 2005.
• And "The Pope's Contradictions," Der Spiegel, March 26, 2005, for Kung's bile against the Holy Father's predecessor.

May Your Expectations Be Fulfilled

This was not an act of continuity. There is simply no other figure more extreme than the new Pope on the issues that divide the Church. No one....I expected continuity. I didn't expect intensification of the fundamentalism and insularity of the current hierarchy. I expect an imminent ban on all gay seminarians, celibate or otherwise. And I expect the Church's immersion in the culture wars in the West. –Andrew Sullivan [emphasis added]

• See also "Cardinal Sins," New Republic, July 4, 1998, for Sullivan's jaundiced views on Cardinal Ratzinger's theology.
• And note Sullivan's disdain for Pope John Paul II, as recently reported by Penraker.

"Final Gift" Brings Needed Focus on Culture

The election of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger as Pope was John Paul II's last gift to the Roman Catholic Church. No cardinal was closer to John Paul II, or talked at length with him more often....The new Pope will not be a clone of the old....He is a much shyer man, quieter, more like a country pastor or a scholar than like an actor striding across all history as his stage....Yet his ideas about the changes needed by Church institutions are, on the face of it, more radical than those of John Paul II, who was much more focused on the world at large than on the structure of the Church....

Pope John Paul II thought the first issue of his time was the murderous politics that resulted from the separation of Europe into two by the Soviet Union. He saw it as chiefly a political issue, to be defeated by moral means. Pope Benedict XVI...is more likely to take culture as the central issue of the new millennium: What is the culture necessary to preserve free societies from their own internal dangers—and to make them worthy of the sacrifices that brought them into being? –Michael Novak [emphasis added]

• See also "Culture in Crisis," National Review Online, April 19, 2005.

"Bothered" by the Truth? Au Contraire!

Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger, is not afraid to be unpopular. That is why he was elected Pope.…The obligation of the Christian, Ratzinger has said, "is to recover the capacity for nonconformism." Just because the world (or at least certain wealthy, educated parts of it)is going in one direction does not mean that the Church should follow. On the contrary, he and those who follow him believe that the key to Catholic survival in the face of militant Islam and an evangelical Christianity that is growing rapidly in Latin America is to offer an alternative that is unembarrassed in declaring itself as the true path to God. Some may be bothered by that. Ratzinger is not. –E.J. Dionne, Jr. [emphasis added]

• See also "Cardinal Ratzinger's Challenge," Washington Post, April 18, 2005.
• And see Amy Welborne's rebuttal thereof on Open Book.

Challenging the Spirit of the Time

In his cast of mind the new Pope is rather more sombre than his predecessor. He is more disturbed by false argument, less optimistic about the immediate prospects for mankind. He believes, as he told the conclave this week, that the "dictatorship of relativism" is tyrannising the modern world. And so his favoured images are of survival, preservation of treasure, and of the regrowth of the Church from a tiny grain of mustard seed. He admires Englishmen such as Thomas More and Cardinal Newman—"a man who listens to his conscience and for whom the truth that he has recognised...is above approval and acceptance, is really an ideal and a model for me."

The answer to the question of our time, the new Pope believes, may be to challenge the spirit of that time: "The Church can be contemporary by being anti-contemporary." –Charles Moore

True Enough

One of the main thrusts of Benedict XVI's papacy will be will be to fight the notion that all truths are relative and, P.S., nothing's really true anyway. "We are moving," Ratzinger has said, toward "a dictatorship of relativism...that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure."...Maybe the motto for the new papacy should be the truth, the *whole* truth, and nothing but the truth.Oh, and one other thing: Based on what he has written and said, our new Pope understands the importance of beauty and a sense of sacredness in the liturgy. Isn't it just about time to put the altar back where it belongs? –Charlotte Hayes

"We're going to use Terri Schiavo later on."

Who said that?

DNC Chair Howard Dean this past Friday.

Suprised?

I'm not.

Disgusting! How can Democrats remain silent about this man and his remarks here?

Yes, the GOP memo from a now fired staffer of Senator Martinez of Florida which looked at the Congressional legislation as "good" for Republicans was dispicable. But that memo did not come from the chairman of major political party.

Habemus Papam!

With those joyous words last uttered in 1978, the city of Rome and the world heard the Good News of the election of the 265th Pontiff to govern the Universal Church from the Chair of St. Peter, Joseph Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to whom we bend our knee in filial fidelity as Our Holy Father, Benedict XVI.

"The Ratzinger Fan Club" now has a new name—the faithful in union with Rome, of which, by God's grace, we are blessed to be part.

Long live Pope Benedict XVI! Victory to Christ Our King! All honor to Mary Our Queen!

Cardinal McCarrick's Modus Operandi

First, Dialogue With CINO Enablers of Abortion, Then...

"We have to learn to dialogue with Islam. The Catholic Church cannot be full and complete unless it is able to speak to those who are not Catholic." –Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Washington, DC, in Tracy Wilkinson and Richard Boudreaux, "Electors Gather to Pick a Pope," Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2005.

(excerpted from "Point Blank (Round 21): Papal Conclave" on Times Against Humanity)

"Thanks Be to God, Our Sister Is Being Cared For"

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

Jorge Mederos' article cited below has been published by La Raza.

"By the intervention of the State of Illinois government, feeding was resumed for Clara Martinez," the paper's editor reports. "She had been 30 days without food per her husband's decision."

Some forty people were brought together by the Hispanic Evangelical Church for a vigil of prayers and hymns. They were greeted with the news that she was once again receiving nutrition. "Thanks be to God, our sister is being cared for,” said Bolivian Pastor Guillermo Espinoza.

Sources at the state's Department of Human Services told the EFE wire service that the woman's gastric feeding tube was ordered reconnected after the visit by an inspector to the house where she is being attended. Authorities would otherwise have ordered her moved to a hospital.

According to Espinoza, the state's intervention resulted from pressure by the press and right-to-life organizations in the United States....

The case, made public by La Raza newspaper, had immediate repercussions in the community of almost a million Mexicans who live in Illinois.

Furthermore, several right-to-life organizations, especially the movement that emerged with the Terri Schiavo case, pressured authorities with threats of recourse to a restraining order for legal protection for the Mexican woman.

These organizations also offered legal assistance to the family of Clara Martínez to fight in court against her husband's decision.

Editor's Note:

CURE's offer of assistance to Clara Martinez and her family, of course, still stands. Winning a battle should not be confused with ending the war. That can prove a deadly error.

A Pastor and a Paper Partner To Save a Life!

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

As posted by CURE advisor Tim Ruchti on Blogs for Terri:

I have just received confirmation from Jorge Mederos, editor of the Chicago newspaper La Raza, that Clara Martinez has had her feeding tube reconnected and is receiving nourishment. The Human Services Inspector General's Office of the Governor, who contacted him yesterday, intervened. We will link to Jorge's article with the details when it is available.

Your prayers, phone calls, and public attention made a tremendous difference. Our highest respect to Pastor Espinoza for courageously raising his voice in defense of Clara Martinez's God-given right to life. Our compliments to Mr. Mederos and La Raza for exposing this covert crime in the making, which is no longer hidden thanks to their professional reporting.

Editor's Note:

Tim speaks for the entire CURE family, when we express our heartfelt gratitude to Pastor Espinoza for his courage, Jorge Mederos for his integrity, and all who joined us in praying and acting for Clara. Above all, we thank the One Who answered those prayers.

Supplemental Reading:

The priority of CURE's offline activity in defense of Clara Martinez precluded the timely crosspost of a several Life Matters! reports. For our readers' convenience, they are listed here for those seeking additional background information:

• Taking Action for Clara: Fighting Against the Odds (April 16)
• The Fight for Clara: A Battlefront Update (April 16)
• Your Constituent Needs You Now, Senator! (April 17)

New US Ambassador to the Vatican Is Named

His name is Francis Rooney. He is an Oklahoma Businessman.

Pastor Exposes Spousal Starvation

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

As posted by CURE advisor Tim Ruchti on Blogs for Terri:

Several people have emailed me the following story about Clara Martinez, a Chicago woman who is reportedly being starved to death.

Martinez suffered a debilitating stroke a year ago, and her husband signed a "Do-Not-Resuscitate" order that led to the disconnection of her feeding tube. She is able to consume liquids through her mouth and, so far, has survived for thirty days without food.

Under "normal" circumstances her situation would have gone unnoticed had it not been for the intervention of a pastor of the Hispanic Evangelical Church. Her family also opposes the husband's decision.

I spoke to the article's author, Jorge Mederos. He said the family feels "powerless" and has called the media without response. "No one is paying attention," he said. "The family is planning a protest tomorrow or over the weekend."

Here is the first portion of the article.

In a house on Chicago's southeast side, a Mexican family is going through a heartbreak like the tragedy that befell the American Terri Schiavo’s family and deeply affected both those who defend the right to life and partisans of euthanasia. But no voices had been raised so far in this case because very few knew about the situation concerning the 39-year-old Latin woman whose husband decided to disconnect the tube that had been feeding her during her three and a half years in a vegetative state.

As of the close of this edition, Clara Martinez, 39 years old and mother of two children—aged five and seven years—had been almost 30 days without food and was still alive, taking only water. For the last year she has been cared for in her home, with special medical equipment installed in the living room, while the rest of the family try to go on with their lives.

This woman has remained in this condition since suffering a stroke. She was cared for in the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Medical Center, later at an intermediate care facility, then at the hospital again, and finally she was taken to her home. At that time the physicians had judged her condition to be irreversible.

Under these conditions her husband Salvador Martinez, 35 years old and also Mexican, resolved that his wife should not live artificially. He signed a "Do Not Resuscitate" order to keep her from being revived artificially and disconnected the feeding machine. Under these conditions the woman should have died by withdrawal of feeding and the case would have gone unnoticed, had it not been for the intervention of a pastor of the Hispanic Evangelical Church at 4340 W. 87th St....

[The pastor] said that when he was with the wife, "she moved, opened her eyes, and when we prayed and sang together by her bedside, she blinked as though she was listening." He said it was also significant that, in spite of her condition, the woman was still "able to take water."

Read the rest of Jorge Mederos' article in La Raza.

Editor's Note:

Tim has been in touch with Pastor Guillermo Espinoza, and CURE is offering its assistance to the family. May God bless Pastor Espinoza for raising his voice in defense of Clara's Martinez's God-given right to life. Our compliments to Mr. Mederos and La Raza for exposing this covert crime in the making, which is no longer hidden thanks to their professional reporting.

No Catholics Need Apply

From TAS:

Washington special interest groups -- notorious for their anti-religious hostility toward conservatives -- are conducting a coordinated smear campaign against Scott Bloch, George Bush's appointee to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which reviews and refers whistleblower disclosures to agency heads. In an interview with TAS, Pete Leon, legislative director for Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who has called for Bloch's resignation, revealed the fundamental anti-religious bigotry at the heart of the campaign. Articulating his objections to Bloch, Leon said, "He is a devout Catholic," then quickly added, after he realized his gaffe, the famously insincere line from Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

By "cronies," PEER [Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility] means Catholics. PEER's problem with Bloch is not that he has hired people he knows, but that he has hired Catholics he knows. Last Monday, PEER's press release made sure to mention that Hicks oversaw a Catholic boarding school. Its Nov. 17, 2004 press release smeared Hicks by suggesting he was complicit in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, diocese's sexual abuse scandal. He had nothing to do with it. In that release, Ruch, citing a popular anti-Catholic book, said, "Scott Bloch's personnel practices are taken straight from The DaVinci Code rather than the civil service manual."

The PEER press release also said Bloch "is a religious conservative who had served as deputy director in the Justice Department's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives." PEER cited Bloch's hires of graduates from "ultra-conservative" Ave Maria Law School as Schedule A attorneys, who can be hired non-competitively, ignoring that he has also hired attorneys from George Washington, Georgetown, and the University of Virginia. And what exactly is Ruch's objection to Ave Maria? It is an accredited law school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and its first class of graduates performed better on the bar exam than any other Michigan school. Are graduates there prohibited from government service in his view?

Hat tip to Amy Welborn.

True Believers or False Deceivers?

Once again demonstrating that the Catholic vote is not a myth, its erstwhile traditional beneficiary, the Democrat Party, is renewing its efforts to entice it. "When it comes to religion, and particularly the 'Catholic vote,' Democrats have become true believers," Joe Feurherd observes in the National Catholic Reporter. NCR's Washington correspondent cites a 17-page memo on "Reclaiming the White Catholic Vote" by political operative Stanley Greenberg, a sidekick of the infamous Ragin' Cajun, James Carville.

"The Democrats can compete comfortably for half the Catholics," Greenberg claims at the onset.

Democrats win their greatest support from the less observant [and] those looking for a more modern Church...[Indeed,] Democrats hold a 22-point advantage in partisanship among those who would prefer a more modern Church.

It is interesting to note how the modernists peddle the embrace of evils as ancient as child sacrifice and unnatural vice as "modernity."

"But half is not good enough" to win elections, Greenberg concedes. "which means reaching across the cultural divide." True enough, but the question remains, as when Dives begged Lazarus for a drop of water to wet his burning lips across another monumental gap, can they? As Feurherd puts it:

The question, therefore, is no longer whether Democrats should appeal to the socially-conservative but economically-liberal voters who were once a core part of their constituency, but how they can do so without alienating the party's culturally-liberal base.

This will not be an easy task. Consider a few of the examples of Democrat efforts to woo "traditional Catholics" cited by Feuherd:

• "Since November's election, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and newly-installed Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean have lamented the party's inability to reach out to Democrats who oppose abortion-rights but agree with the party's principals [sic] on most every other issue."

But when, shortly after his 2004 defeat by President George W. Bush, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told a closed-door liberal confab that Democrats needed to welcome more pro-life candidates into the party, there was an audible gasp, Nancy Keenan, NARAL Pro-Choice America, reported. And Planned Parenthood's Gloria Feldt whined that Kerry "had not helped his cause," echoing the complaints of many pro-aborts who blamed Kerry for not talking enough about his abortion albatross in a race lost in large measure in the Catholic vote.

• Rev. Jim Wallis' God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, is a best seller.

But when the leftist minister wrote in defense of Terri Schiavo that "I cannot understand why parents willing to take care of their disabled daughter were not allowed to" and quoted his wife's observation that "the issue is not [the] quality of life, but the ethical quality of our society," the overwhelming response from readers of Sojourners' SoJoMail was negative.
Typical comments included a woman who described the mentally disabled woman as "already dead" and another who opined that "keeping a brainstem and heart functioning can in no way be defined as 'life.'"

• Congressional Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, promoted the candidacy of former Rep. Tim Roemer, a pro-life Catholic, to head the Democratic National Committee.
  

But, of course, Roemer's doomed candidacy failed when he was defeated by pro-abort Dean, in a campaign in which, as James Antell reported for American Daily:

Roemer's candidacy was bogged down in the controversy over his pro-life congressional voting record. At some forums for the would-be DNC chairmen, pro-choice audience members would boo him when he rose to speak. He frequently found himself under attack.

"One day I received by messenger a dirty and smudged envelope with no return address," wrote the New Republic's Ryan Lizza. "Inside were five pages of anti-Roemer opposition research about his positions on everything from Israel and abortion to labor and Social Security."

"These tactics show the limits of Democratic outreach to pro-life voters and party members," Antell observed. As I concluded last December for Catholics in the Public Square:

Given the rabid resistance to the slightest concession to reason and, yes, morality by the Feminazis, any widening of the Democrat Party's tent in terms of pro-life Democrats and their views is apt to be a carnival sideshow: big on promise and short on delivery.

Bishop Begs Governor: Respect Freedom of Religion

Incredible account from Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments of Religion. What a wonderful statement from Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago. Heavenly Father send us more men like him!


Few may have heard the local Illinois news about Governor Blagojevich issuing an executive order demanding that pharmacists must fill prescriptions for contraceptives, even if it goes contrary to their conscience. Fewer probably heard what one of the Catholic auxillary bishops of Chicago said to Gov. Blagojevich at a Mass for John Paul II just a mile or two from our office on April 3. We take this directly from the Sunday bulletin of St. John Cantius Church, Chicago:

POST-COMMUNION REMARKS (condensed version) AT MASS FOR POPE JOHN PAUL II
St. Hyacinth Basilica, Chicago, Illinois April 3, 2005

These comments were made by Bishop Thomas Paprocki concerning the recent legislation demanding that pharmacists must fill prescriptions for contraceptives, even if it goes contrary to their conscience.

Before we leave this beautiful Basilica of St. Hyacinth, I wish to say a few words of thanks and to make a special request in honor of Pope John Paul II. . . .

. . . . Thank you also to the civic officials for your presence, especially the Consul General of Poland and his wife, Mr. & Mrs. Franciszek Adamczyk, and the Governor of the State of Illinois, the Honorable Rod Blagojevich.

That brings me to my request. As some of you know, I come from a family of pharmacists. My grandfather and his brother were pharmacists. My father and his brother were pharmacists with their own drug stores. Two of my brothers currently work in pharmacies, and I have a niece just beginning pharmacy school, thus marking four generations of pharmacists in the Paprocki family. In fact, if I had not become a priest, I probably would have become a pharmacist myself. But I never would have thought that the day would come when pharmacists would have to choose between practicing their profession as a pharmacist and living their profession of the Catholic faith. Yet that is precisely the situation that Illinois pharmacists now find themselves in because the Governor last Friday signed an “emergency regulation” requiring that all pharmacies and pharmacists in the State of Illinois will be expected to accept and fill prescriptions for contraceptives without delay.

The obvious problem, as Pope John Paul II so clearly and repeatedly taught, is that Catholics believe that artificial contraception is morally wrong; moreover, some contraceptives, so-called “morning after” pills, actually induce abortion by stopping the life of an early human embryo.

As a lawyer myself, I believe that this executive order violates the First Amendment religious rights of the pharmacist under the United States Constitution and the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. As a Bishop, I am dismayed that our secular society has reached the point that individuals are being required by law to violate their personal religious beliefs in order to accommodate the selfish demands of special interest groups.

Mr. Governor, I mean no disrespect. I am not here to criticize or scold you. On the contrary, I respectfully plead with you, I beg of you, to rescind your executive order. You are here, as we all are, to pay our respects to the life of Pope John Paul II. He spoke consistently and forcefully against moral evils and the whole point of his life was to put such words into action.

Pope John Paul II once said, “In the designs of divine providence, there is no such thing as mere coincidence.” Hence, I believe it is no mere coincidence that I have this opportunity to address this issue in person and in public just two days after the Governor issued his decree.

Mr. Governor, out of respect for our beloved Pope John Paul II, please respect his wishes; please rescind your order. Let our pharmacists be free to follow their faith!

The spirit of John Paul II lives on in Bishop Paprocki in speaking truth to power on behalf of religious freedom.

Before You Sign . . . On the Dotted Line

As posted on Blogs for Terri:

Do not sign a living will or any of its variants. If you have signed one,
rescind it immediately and destroy every copy. Do not sign an advance
directive that would deny you treatment on the basis of vague and
life-endangering language.Don't be deceived by "pro-life" packaging.
Before you sign on the dotted line, read Dr. Byrne's informed analysis.

by Paul A. Byrne, M.D.
Past President, Catholic Medical Association

In 1990, Congress passed the Patient Self-Determination Act. As much of the legislation enacted amidst the escalating disrespect for life that ensued in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade and Karen Ann Quinlan, the Act does not enhance but debases the legitimate rights of patients and physicians, while undermining everyone's right to life. Under the law, anyone entering a healthcare facility that receives any federal funds will be proselytized, if not pushed, to sign the misnamed "living will."

• The "Living Will"

The myriad dangers of the suicidal living will are well-documented if not well-known. The latter is not surprising given a mass media that covers up the mass murder of the abortion holocaust, while promoting the impending euthanasia holocaust through death peddlers like Abigail Dear Abby Van Buren, who has hawked the living will for decades. Euthanasia, however, has as much to do with the ballyhooed "right to die" as abortion has to do with the equally amoral and inane slogan "freedom of choice." The plain truth is that euthanasia, like abortion, is something done to, not chosen by, its victims.

Even when the victim cooperates in his death by signing a living will, it is rarely with full knowledge of the nature or consequences of his act and more often represents his surrender to the cultural pessimism that corrodes his God-given will to live.The trick, then, is to convince the potential victim of euthanasia, which includes everyone reading these lines, to sign his death warrant on the dotted line, especially, the person who has been forewarned about the deadly dangers of the living will by those "pro-life
fanatics."

An effective way is to imitate the wicked queen in Sleeping Beauty and hide your poison deep within a deceptively enticing and highly polished exterior. The apple, in this case, is a new name concealing an old lie. The polish is the striking of familiar chords, while marching to a decidedly different drummer, as in the duplicitous "Christian Affirmation of Life," which is anything but an affirmation of life and anything but Christian.


Read the rest.

Orson Scott Card on Terri Schiavo

I missed this in the wake of the passing of our Holy Father, but at the website Ornery American, the science-fiction/fantasy writer Orson Scott Card weighs in on Million Dollar Baby and the tragedy of Terri Schiavo: "Whose Life Is Worth Living?" March 20, 2005.

I could post an excerpt, but the whole essay is good.

Also, via Peter Sean Bradley (Lex Communis), another article by Card on Pope John Paul II: -- offering some interesting remarks on his passing from his perspective as a devout Mormon: "Why I Miss Karol Wojtyla" (RealClearPolitics, April 9, 2005).

Orson Scott Card first gained recognition as a talented science fiction writer, earning numerous rewards for novels like Ender's Game. In the past several years he has also proven himself to be an exceptional social critic, suprising many fans (and earning the condemnation of others) by his "conservative" views on abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, etc. We should be thankful that this Mormon is on our side in the culture war.

Pro-Life Democrat Will Represent Party Despite Abortion Battle

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A leading pro-life Democrat announced Friday he will serve as a spokesman for the Democratic Party despite losing a battle over for the party chairmanship over the controversial issue of abortion. Former Indiana Congressman Tim Roemer, [who is a practicing Catholic,] told an audience at the National Press Club that he has been asked by representatives of the Democratic National Committee to speak for the party on social issues at local Democrat functions. Roemer made a bid for the party chairmanship and said the party needed to reconsider its strong pro-abrotion views to attract more voters in the South and Midwest. However, he lost to former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, an abortion advocate who lost the presidential nomination to John Kerry but found himself the darling of pro-abortion groups and the party;s liberal wing. Although abortion advocates ran a fierce campaign against Roemer -- snubbing him from meetings and booing him at gatherings -- Dean decided he would be a valuable speaker. "They've reached out and asked if I want to go to different states, give Jefferson-Jackson speeches, reach out and talk about some of the issues I talked about in the DNC race," Roemer said. "There were missed opportunities in the last election," Roemer added. Read the complete story.

Paul Johnson on Pope John Paul II's Steadfast Commitment to Life

John Paul was a philosopher by inclinations and training, and his philosophy was infused by reverence and respect for human life in all its multitudinous epiphanies. Humans, albeit fallible and often foolish, were made in God's image, and to take a life, without the strongest possible justification, was an assault on God. . . .

This love for life made John Paul a stern and unflinching upholder of traditional Catholic teaching in three important respects. He refused to countenance any form of artificial contraception, allowing Catholics to plan their families only by natural methods. As a priest he had made a special study of the medical sciences which affect families, and as Archbishop of Krakow he set up an institute devoted to the problems of conception, birth and parenting. He believed to his dying day that nature was the only reliable and health-preserving guide in such matters.

The pope was likewise a vehement opponent of any form of euthanasia, believing that life in the extremely old or chronically sick, even seemingly insensible sufferers, was just as precious--and to be defended just as passionately--as in the young and vigorous. To him, the battle to preserve life was all-important, uncompromising and perpetual.

In his last years, and especially his last weeks, he fought this battle himself with all the obstinacy of his enormous will. His struggle to perform his global duties right to the end was a painful but hugely effective demonstration against the iniquity of a compulsory retirement age, but also a gesture of protest against all those who would sideline, condescend to, and render impotent the very old. He reminded the world that the aged and frail might lack everything else but could be rich in the quality always in the shortest possible supply in the world--wisdom. His last gift to humanity was a moving and electrifying demonstration of what Christians call a bona mors--how to die.

John Paul was, perhaps, most vehement in his condemnation of abortion, especially when practiced under the sanction of law and on a huge scientific scale, in the clinics specially created to smother the spark of life before birth, which he compared to the death camps erected by Nazi and Soviet mass murderers. It was a sharp sword in his heart which filled him with righteous indignation that, after the world had been scourged for more than 50 years by the mass killings of totalitarianism, anti-life politicians, above all in the democracies, should have set up a holocaust of the unborn which has already--as he often asserted with awe and anger--ended the existence of more tiny human creatures than all the efforts of Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined. . . .

"The Philosopher-Pope", by historian Paul Johnson. Wall Street Journal April 9, 2005.

"Terri Saved My Brother's Life"

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

As we honor Terri's legacy by fighting for Mae Magouirk,
it is encouraging to note one life already spared. –Editor
by Callie S. Baillie

My brother went into acute respiratory failure a year ago September at 45 years old. By the time I got the phone call, he was on a ventilator in the ICU of a small hospital several hours from my home. Think SARS without the contagious aspect, and you'll get some idea of his condition. As the Merck site puts it:

The survival rate for patients with severe ARDS who receive appropriate treatment is about 60%; if the severe hypoxemia of ARDS is not recognized and treated, cardiopulmonary arrest occurs in 90% of patients.

There was the usual story: long drives, long nights, phone ringing at any old hour—"You'd better come, and do you want us to resuscitate if his heart stops before you get here?"—that sort of thing, but he kept reviving despite every expectation to the contrary.

One or the other of us showed up there every day, right on through Christmas. He got off oxygen and had his trach tube removed. He started eating again and went to physical therapy. And then, one January day, lo and behold, he went home. Wobbly, frail, confused, forgetful, but home.

Two months later, he was buying books and shopping at Wal-Mart. He'll be on a lot of medicine for the rest of his life, but that's a minor detail. And the reference to the news?

If I hadn't been seething for weeks over the attempted murder of Terry Schiavo, my brother would now be ashes.

Editor's Note

The newest member of CURE's Board of Advisors, Callie Baillie writes from Winslow, NC, where she hosts Christianity and Middle Earth.

Bloggers March as Mae Flees Hospice Death Camp

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

As recently reported by my Blogs for Terri fellow author Richard here and elsewhere:

Just received telephone call (3:00 pm ET) from Ken Mullinax, nephew of Mae [Magouirk], followed by this e-mail:

Thanks to the support of all friends of Terri, my aunt Mae Magouirk has been air-lifted to the University of Alabama-Birmingham Medical Center...and [is] receiving IV fluids, nourishment and some of the finest medical care available in the United States! Praise be the name of the Lord God...

Thanks to Terri's friends... It would never ever have been possible without bloggers who love life and the truth!! I am racing from my home to UAB now and will type a detailed update after I see my Aunt Mae! Thanks, guys, your calls, emails, blogs and prayers did it all!!!

I so love you, guys!!!!!!!!!!

Ken Mullinax, nephew of Mae

It is not over yet—the opposition is still trying to get her back to the hospice—so keep fighting, bloggers and readers!

Editor's Note:

Ken, it looks like Cousin Beth may be suffering from "Michael Schiavo syndrome," whose chief symptom is a persistent urge to cause a family member to die prematurely.

Meanwhile, while it is we who salute you, not everyone shares your kind and generous assessment of our efforts, as witness the following rant that CURE is honored to have played its part in engendering:

Today a bunch of rightie bloggers are worked up over the case of a Georgia woman who they say is neither terminal nor comatose but is being deprived of care by a grandaughter who, naturally will inherit a bunch of money when Granny dies. In other words, they've found their new Terri Schiavo. [Editor's Note: They're not hard to find, just visit almost any hospice and most hospitals and nursing homes.]

Now, if the facts of the case are as the bloggers describe them, poor Granny is indeed being callously and cruelly starved to death. However, if the facts of the case are as the bloggers describe them, I will eat my sneakers.

Adidas, no doubt. Pass the salt! And remember, as Richard reminds us, keep fighting!

Deja Vu in Georgia: Court-Sanctioned Starvation Stalks New Victim

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

As posted by CURE advisor Fr. Rob Johansen on Thrown Back (with additional links):

85-year-old Mae Magouirk of LaGrange, GA, is currently being deprived of nutrition and hydration at the request of her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy. Mrs. Magouirk suffered an aortic dissection 2 weeks ago and was hospitalized. Though her doctors have said that she is not terminally ill, Ms. Gaddy declared that she held medical power of attorney for Mae, and had her transferred to the LaGrange Hospice. Later investigation revealed that Ms. Gaddy did not in fact have such power of attorney.

Furthermore, Mae's "living will" provides that nutrition and hydration are to be withheld only if she is [in a coma or "persistent vegetative state]. Mae is in neither condition. Neither is her condition terminal.

Furthermore, under Georgia law, if there is no power of attorney specifying a health care decisionmaker, such authority is given to the closest living relatives. Mae's brother, A. B. McLeod, and sister, Lonnie Ruth Mullinax, are both still alive and capable of making such decisions. They opposed Mae's transfer to hospice, and are fighting to save her life. But in spite of the lack of a power of attorney, and the fact that there are closer living relatives who should be given precedence by Georgia law, Ms. Gaddy sought an emergency appointment as guardian from the local probate court.

The probate judge, Donald Boyd—who, I am told, is not an attorney and does not have a law degree—granted Gaddy's request, thereby giving her the power to starve and dehydrate Magouirk to death, though such an action is contrary to the provisions of the living will.

I have spoken to Kenneth Mullinax, Mae's nephew, and he has confirmed all the above. He also tells me that he believes that Ms. Gaddy has no bad motives, but is simply misguided and mistaken. Mullinax said that Ms. Gaddy has testified in court that she has "prayed over" Mae, and is convinced that it is "time for her to go". Whether the fact is relevant or not remains to be seen, but apparently Ms. Gaddy is also the sole beneficiary of Mae's will. [Editor's Note: Mae Magouirk will be just as dead regardless of her murderer's "misguided" or malevolent motive.]

Kenneth has told me that they need help in getting the word out, and bringing Mae's case to the media's attention. Given the amount of coverage of the Holy Father's death, that may be difficult. But we have to raise the visibility of this case. They have another hearing coming up, and Kenneth indicated that they also may need expert assistance, both legal and medical.

The similarities of Mae Magouirk's situation and Terri Schiavo's are obvious: Once again we have a family divided over what care should be given to a seriously ill relative. And once again, we have a judge playing God with someone's life. But what is different—and in a sense worse—is that Mae is being deprived of food and water in clear contravention of her own stated wishes, and at the request of someone who should have no standing under Georgia law.

More information is available at Blogs for Terri. If you want to contact Kenneth Mullinax to get more information or to offer help, you may e-mail him at mockingbird@compuhelp.net.

Editor's Note:

CURE has e-mailed Mr. Mullinax to offer our assistance. Further developments will be posted here and on Blogs for Terri. Pray and act for Mae!

Colorado Governor Vetoes Morning After Pill Bill Catholics Opposed

Denver, CO (LifeNews.com) -- Colorado Governor Bill Owens vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have required Colorado hospitals to tell victims of rape that they can obtain the morning after pill. Pro-life advocates opposed the bill because the so-called emergency contraception sometimes causes an abortion. Catholic hospitals also opposed the bill because it would have forced them to go against their religious beliefs by offering the drugs. Owens, who is Catholic, said the bill was likely unconstitutional and worried that it didn't give women who suffer from a rape enough information about the drug and its effects. 'Without informed consent, a woman could innocently violate her personal, moral and religious beliefs about when life begins,'' Owens said Tuesday. State Rep. Fran Coleman, who sponsored the legislation, told the Associated Press she was upset at Governor Owens' veto.

Read the complete story.

Poll: American Catholics Agreed With Pope John Paul II on Abortion

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new poll conducted by the Gallup Organization finds that American Catholics agreed with Pope John Paul II on abortion and don't want the church to changes its pro-life stance. The pope passed away last week and Catholic cardinals are expected to vote on a new church leader in the next two weeks. The Gallup poll, conducted for CNN and USA Today, found that a majority of Catholics in the United States want the next pope to have a similar outlook on key social issues as John Paul II. The pope took strong pro-life stands opposing abortion as well as euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research. More than half of those polled, 59 percent, said they want someone with the same views on political issues while just one-third wanted a more liberal pope. Some 4 percent of the 254 Catholics polled want a pope who is more conservative. A strong majority of American Catholics believe the Catholic Church should retain its view against abortion. Approximately 59 percent of those polled favor the church's pro-life stance while just 37 percent of respondents opposed it. Catholics who attend church on a weekly basis were more likely to back the church's pro-life position, by a 69 to 29 percent margin.

Read the complete story.

Revealing the Hidden Agenda: Checkbook Euthanasia

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

Q: How can you tell when a euthanasia advocate is telling the truth?

A: When he disgusts you even more than usually.

Consider biological psychologist Hal Herzog, writing in the Asheville, NC, Citizens-Times on the moral, social, and legal issues raised not by Terri Schindler Schiavo's imposed death, but by her inadequate care.

Noting that "most commentators...have ignored the troubling inescapable financial consequences of severe irreversible brain damage to affected families and to taxpayers," Herzog proceeds to make the same case for checkbook euthanasia that Professors Karl Binding and Erich Hoche raised in Germany's Weimar Republic some 80 years ago in their seminal work The Destruction of Life Devoid of Value.

"Here are the facts," Herzog ominously begins:

According to a 2002 report in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, the frequency of persistent vegetative state in the United States is 64 to 140 per million people. Thus, somewhere between 538 and 1,176 North Carolinians are probably afflicted with this condition. At a cost of about $80,000 a year per person, this translates to an annual financial burden to the North Carolina health-care system of $43 million to $94 million—enough to hire between 1,500 and 3,500 additional public school teachers.

That last propaganda ploy, i.e., comparing the costs of caring for persons with disablities with the cost of funding productive laborers is right out of the euthanasia playbook. As Mark Mostert observes in the Fall 2002 issue of the Journal of Special Education:

In Binding and Hoche's terms, [the former] were "useless eaters" whose "ballast lives" could be tossed overboard to better balance the economic ship of state. In speaking of those with disabilities, and explicitly advocating involuntary euthanasia, Binding and Hoche wrote:

Their life is absolutely pointless, but they do not regard it as being unbearable. They are a terrible, heavy burden upon their relatives and society as a whole. Their death would not create even the smallest gap--except perhaps in the feelings of their mothers or loyal nurses.

Just like today!

Furthermore, Binding and Hoche drove home the economic argument by calculating the total cost expended in caring for such people. They concluded that this cost was "a massive capital in the form of foodstuffs, clothing and heating, which is being subtracted from the national product for entirely unproductive purposes."

As their disciple Herzog continues:

The life expectancy of a young adult in a persistent vegetative state is 11.5 years, making their lifetime health-care costs about $1 million. With a median family income of $38,000, few North Carolina families can bear this burden. Who should pay to keep people like Terri Schiavo alive?

Could this be why Judge George Greer ruled so consistently for Terri's eradication? After all, the Republican judge's conservatism was scarcely the compassionate sort.

Christ Opens the Door to our Holy Father

. . . We are a culture of death because we are a culture of fear. Far from being irrelevant, John Paul was feared and hated because his message was exactly the message we needed to hear. We said that he did not understand us, because he understood us too well. He did not accept our heroic vision of ourselves, so we said he was blinded by his archaic prejudices. But in fact, like all prophets, he saw through our false images of greatness. He saw our pitiful souls, made for holiness and contented with mediocrity--he saw us and he loved us, as his Master loves us. And we could not stand it.

May he rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon him. And by his prayers, may we obtain the grace to follow his example. May we love without fear, and hope without shame. May we never rest content with anything less than the full humanity that is ours in Christ. And may we be gathered together, with Karol Wojtila and all the faithful departed, in the presence of our Lord who bought us with his blood.

-- Requiescat in pace JPII, from the blog Ithilien.

The Living Will and the Will to Live

In the wake of the murder of Terri Schiavo at the hands of the court, blogger Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam has an important post on distinguishing between a "Living Will" -- and its unforseen and unintended consequences -- and a properly defined "Loving Will" as an ethical alternative, with additional resources from the National Right to Life Committee and American Life League.

The bottom line is this: if you are someone who doesn't want medical technology to prolong your last hours, but who also doesn't want to be starved or allowed to die just because you have a disability, your wishes will be far more likely to be respected if you sign a properly prepared Will to Live than if you sign a living will.

Something to consider before joining the crowd in their frenzied rush to the lawyer.

Lessons Learned When Lives Are Lost

From the pages of Life Matters! . . .

The lessons learned in the fight against euthanasia come at a very dear price, and if we ignore them, the cost will be higher still.

A Saintly Salmagundi's Fr. Bryce Sibley has kindly called our attention to several media "textbooks" worthy of our review.

Wrong Questions Yield Wrong Answers

For all the attention we have paid to the Schiavo case, we have asked many of the wrong questions, living as we do on the playing field of modern liberalism. We have asked whether she is really in a persistent vegetative state, instead of reflecting on what we owe people in a persistent vegetative state. We have asked what she would have wanted as a competent person imagining herself in such a condition, instead of asking what we owe the person who is now with us, a person who can no longer speak for herself, a person entrusted to the care of her family and the protection of her society. –Eric Cohen, "How Liberalism Failed Terri Schiavo," The Weekly Standard, March 25, 2005.

The Most Dangerous Branch of Government

Alexander Hamilton's famous last words in The Federalist described the judiciary as the "least dangerous branch," because it had neither force nor will. Now the judiciary is the most dangerous branch. It doesn't need force because it has smoke and mirrors and a lot of people defending the moronic scribblings of any judge as the perfect efflorescence of "the rule of law." –Anne Coulter, "The emperor's new robes," March 31, 2005.

The Most Derilect Branch of Government

Despite the outward appearance of deliberation, what we witness now as an ongoing feature of the conduct of the judiciary at every level amounts to a judicial riot, in which judges and justices take it upon themselves to disregard the prerogatives of the other branches in order to assert an exclusive and tyrannical control of public standards and conduct....

But in a constitutional system based on checks and balances, one branch can run riot only if some other branch fails to exert the power necessary to constrain its actions within constitutional bounds. This means that the rise of judicial tyranny represents a failure elsewhere in the government....

In the end, the constraint of judicial abuse is especially the responsibility of the executive branch of government, since the executive has both the opportunity and the obligation to act without the interference of the judiciary, provided that in doing so he consults the political will of the legislative power.

Until and unless the people elected to wield executive power in our national and state governments recognize and act upon this responsibility, the judiciary will go unchecked, destroying the balance of power among the branches and with it our system of free, representative self-government. –Alan Keyes, "Judicial review and executive responsibility," March 28, 2005.

License to Kill: An Uncivil Liberty

While lawyers and judges have engaged in a minuet of death, the American Civil Liberties Union, which would be passionately criticizing state court decisions and demanding due process if Terri were a convict on death row, has shamefully served as co-counsel for her husband, Michael Schiavo, in his insistent desire to have her die....

As David Gibbs, the lawyer for Terri's parents, has pointed out, there has been a manifest need for a new federal, Fourteenth Amendment review of the case because Terri's death sentence has been based on seven years of "fatally flawed" state court findings—all based on the invincible neglect of elementary due process by Judge George Greer.

I will be returning to the legacy of Terri Schiavo in the weeks ahead because there will certainly be long-term reverberations from this case and its fracturing of the rule of law in the Florida courts and then the federal courts. –Nat Hentoff, "Terri Schiavo: Judicial Murder," The Village Voice, March 29, 2005.

And we, too, shall be return to it—again and again—in months and years to come.

Taking Away That Which He First Had Given Us

From the pages of Times Against Humanity . . .

These thoughts expressed to his mother by the 16th-century saint Aloysius Gonzaga on his approaching death are worth meditating upon, as we mourn the loss of our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II:

Not long will last that separation: there we shall see one another again and be happy without ever growing tired, united with our Redeemer, praising Him with all our strength, and singing forever His mercies. I do not at all doubt that, leaving aside all that the reasoning of human nature says, we shall easily open the door to faith and to that simple and pure obedience to which we are held by God, offering Him freely and promptly that which is His, and all the more willingly the dearer to you is the thing that He takes from you, believing firmly that which God does is all of it well done, taking away that which He first had given us, and for no other reason than to put it in a safe and sure place, and to give it what we all desire for ourselves.

I have said all this for no other reason than to satisfy the desire that I have that Your Most Illustrious Ladyship and all my family may receive this my departure as a dear gift, and that you may accompany and help me with your Mother's blessing to pass this gulf and reach the shore of all my hopes. I have done it with all the better will because I have nothing else left with which to give you some little proof of the love and filial reverence that I owe you. I end by asking once more very humbly for your blessing.

Joannes Paulus Magnus, John Paul the Great

Reuters photo

"[A] civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law. . . . There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection."
John Paul II, Encyclical Letter The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae), no. 72 (March 25, 1995) (original emphasis).

GOP on Judicial Offensive

FoxNews reports that the GOP is on a judicial offensive to reign in the tyrannical and irrational actions we have seen in the 14-day starvation of Terri Schiavo before her helpless parents. So write letters to the editor, write to your representatives and senators, seek out pertinent bumper stickers, and let Terri's legacy be that we put the judicial tyrants in their place with new legislation. The actions of the courts in this matter have brought grievous shame to our country. The court system, the legal profession, the medical profession, and even law enforcement have all been put to shame for all to see. We cannot overlook this shame.

In a vast improvement over a previous program, Fox's Bill O'Reilly last night discussed the Schiavo case, finally, with a genuinely Catholic moral theologian and with Fox's surprisingly astute legal analyst who both agreed that the Schiavo murder took place because of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which has desensitized our institutions to life and given us a demonic Culture of Death.

At a time when the Pope is gravely ill, we see clearly that he was indeed a great prophet sent by God to point out the great struggle we are in and are entering: building a Culture of Life in the face of so many excuses and rationalizations, even from some clerics, for shameless and astounding acts of evil. Our struggle is now joined, inspired by both Terri Schiavo and John Paul II, both with feeding tubes, whose sufferings have taken center stage through Holy Week and Easter. We now approach Divine Mercy Sunday, a commemoration we owe to John Paul II himself, in which we proclaim and affirm the message of mercy--a message so irrationally and uniformly rejected by so many courts to their eternal and everlasting shame.