Monday, March 20, 2006

When the world turns away from God - there will be more like Terri

As a Catholic who practices her faith, it is very difficult for me to accept what happened to Terri Schindler-Schiavo. As we move towards the anniversary of her court ordered death, we stop and pause to remember that if Terri really wanted to die as her adulterous husband claimed, then she would have given in against him a long time prior to her death. Michael Schiavo did everything possible in an attempt to make Terri die. He took away every single pleasure and stimulation in an attempt to force her to lose the will to live. He even prevented her family from coming to visit for what must have been to Terri an interminable amount of time. Yet Terri did not give in to this form of tyranny and she lived until the point where she was forced to die in what can only be described as torturous death that would not be all that different from the torture and persecution faced by the early Christians.

My Catholic faith, as well as my study of the Scripture has taught me to recognize that when people turn away from God, there is always a break-down in human relationships. The sin of Adam and Eve caused a rupture in the relationship between humanity and God. That sin of disobedience took humanity onto a path where it has been hard to resist temptation to do evil. The effect of the world’s first recorded murder – that is the murder of Abel at the hands of Cain – is at the very heart of every murder that has been contemplated and carried out in the history of humanity, including the court ordered murder of Therese Marie Schindler-Schiavo. What was stopping Michael Schiavo from handing over the care of Terri to her parents and siblings? Nothing, except for his over-inflated ego, and perhaps that guilty secret that he did not want a recovered Terri to reveal, should have prevented Michael Schiavo from doing what her parents wanted.

As I have continued to study the Scriptures, I have learned about the difference between darkness and light. I have learned that the sinner is the one who walks in darkness, because it is the sinner who has separated from God, and who no longer bathes in the light of His Grace. My own fascination for history has taught me that all of the great civilizations of this world have gone through a steady rise and then decline. It is during the time of decline that we see history repeating itself, over and over again – murder, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia of the disabled, euthanasia of girl infants, injustice, pagan practices, and the list of all of the signs of the decline in civilization continues.

My list is not by any stretch of the imagination, an exhaustive list of the evil practices of mankind at the moment when a civilization goes into decline, yet it serves to pin-point that one thing that every age has in common with another age. Whenever man turns away from God, thinking that he/she knows better than God, or even denying the existence of the One True God, as idol worship is encouraged, there is a common thread – with the stoking of the ego, man is more inclined to commit murder, as well as other sins that are offensive to God. This is at the very heart of the fight to kill or to save Therese Marie Schindler-Schiavo.

Whilst we do not know for certain what happened on the morning that Terri collapsed and ended up in a coma that caused her brain damage, there are some things that have emerged from the previous day that point the finger at an ego driven adulterous husband, as having something to do with her condition. Even his desire to totally do away with her, by obtaining court sanctioning of her death, has an element of ego attached – it is an element that cannot be ignored when all of the facts behind this case are researched. One thing is very certain, Michael Schiavo had a problem that needed to be treated by a psychiatrist, because the way in which he was dominating Terri prior to her death was in reality a “flag” or signal that this was a very troubled relationship. Perhaps it is a sign that Michael, who was probably already entering into adulterous relationships behind his wife’s back, was feeling guilty about his sin of betrayal. One cannot deny that Michael Schiavo had committed adultery because he was openly living with his concubine, Jodi Centonze, plus he had sexual relations with at least two other women prior to the time when he began to live with his concubine. It is merely speculation that perhaps there were other women in the life of Michael Schiavo. If this speculation is true, then that would partially explain why he began flying into rages at Terri, since he would have been projecting his guilt for wrong doing onto Terri. Regardless of when the adultery began, it is probable that Michael Schiavo had a very guilty conscience and he would not want Terri to remain alive in order to convict him of his guilt over his betrayal of her trust in him as a husband, or to convict of his guilt over the event that led to her collapse.

The guilt that I speak about at the base or human level is magnified when God comes into the picture. Not only is there a sin against the wife but there is also a sin against God. The ten commands that were given to Moses state:

“Thou shalt not commit adultery”.

This is an offence against both God and neighbour. It is a breaking of the marriage covenant, and that means that this adultery has also served to break the relationship between Michael Schiavo and God. So here we have the first step that comes from satisfying the call of the ego. The relationship with God is broken and as a result of the breaking of this relationship, Michael Schiavo’s conscience became clouded as he moved from one wrong doing into another, until ultimately he committed the most grievous offence of all – he pushed for the legally sanctioned murder of Terri because he could no longer stand to see her lying in bed in her brain-injured state, serving as a reminder that he had caused this situation.

However, the buck does not stop with Michael Schiavo because there are others who were complicit in the court sanctioned murder of Marie Therese Schindler-Schiavo. These are the people who have been pushing to bring about euthanasia on demand in the same way that abortion on demand has been forced upon the nations of the world. Unfortunately not all of the forces behind the court-sanctioned murder of Therese Marie Schindler-Schiavo have been revealed. We still do not know who helped to bank roll the legal fees of George Felos. Then there is the complicity of the bio-ethicists as well as the journalists within the mainstream media. Each is complicit in what they either taught in the schools, or what they wrote in the media.

When God called upon Isaiah to be a prophet, He warned of the injustices that were being perpetrated against the most defenceless in society, and in our modern age, Therese Marie Schindler-Schiavo is the face of the most vulnerable and defenceless within society today – those who cannot speak up for themselves because of a physical impairment caused by injury, or birth defect. Our modern society has made the plunge into oblivion, not only through the murder of the unborn, but by the sanctioning of the killing of those who cannot tell us what he or she really wants. This is the crux of the issue of the case of Schindler vs. Schiavo. Terri could not speak up for herself, and her guardian because of his guilt over his adultery should not have been allowed to kill her with the sanction of the court.

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