U.S. Bishop Fiddle While Terri Burns
By Mary Ann Kreitzer
Marriage continues til “death do us part.” Death freed Terri from the man whose name literally means “slave.” In life Michael Schiavo treated Terri as disposable property. Now his power over her is ended. Out of respect for Terri and her family we are using her maiden name. Pray for Michael Schiavo and his accomplices, slaves of the one who was a “liar and murderer from the beginning.” Editor
One of the
most appalling lessons of the Terri Schindler murder in Florida is the picture
it gives us of the American Church. For at least two years all the member
groups of the Catholic Media Coalition including Les Femmes,
pleaded with the Florida bishops to speak out to save this innocent young
woman. Can anyone imagine the Florida legislature refusing to respond to
a massive campaign orchestrated by a united body of state bishops calling
their flocks to demonstrate and lobby Tallahassee to prevent Terri’s
euthanasia? It never happened. Terri’s bishop, Robert Lynch, refused
any meaningful defense and in the end ran off to Southeast Asia to posture
over the tsunami tragedy while Terri died of thirst at home.
During rallies outside the hospice where Michael kept Terri a virtual
prisoner, priests appeared from other states, but local clergy were almost
invisible, reputedly ordered by their shepherd to stay away. When a group
of pro-lifers from the Washington/Baltimore area, including twenty-one
students from Christendom College in Front Royal, VA, distributed flyers
at Clearwater Catholic churches March 13, they were threatened and driven
off several parish parking lots. “Our people don’t care about
this,” one pastor told them. Only in the end did a few Florida bishops
speak out strongly against the killing. It was too little too late. The
good old boys network deferred to Bishop Lynch, a man more interested
in his appearance in a speedo than the life of one of his vulnerable children.
Those appealing to the other Florida bishops were told over and over by
chancery bureaucrats that they could do nothing because it was Bishop
Lynch’s prerogative to act.
A handful of bishops around the country spoke out for Terri. CMC and others
circulated their statements and posted them on the web, but they were
isolated and received little publicity.
The silence of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
magnified the injustice. In 2003 CMC sent letters and faxes to every bishop
in the country begging for their help. We received six responses. A few
of those referred us to the Florida bishops’ tepid statement, a
rehash of Bishop Lynch’s original weak message which basically called
the situation a family feud. Only in the 11th hour, after Rome spoke in
the person of Renato Cardinal Martino, President of the Pontifical Council
for Justice and Peace, did the USCCB finally respond to the barrage of
pleading. The words came, not from President William Skylstad, but from
the Pro-Life Committee headed by William Cardinal Keeler. To add insult
to injury, on the fourth day of Terri’s agony, as she burned with
thirst, the USCCB had the audacity to hold a national press conference
launching an intense media campaign against the death penalty. There was
no press conference for Terri, no national plea for a moratorium against
executing the innocent disabled. The bishops abandoned a woman who received
not one review of her court-ordered execution, a right given every convicted
serial killer on death row. The bishops were apparently too busy developing
their state-by-state strategy for ending capital punishment.
What Catholic voices spoke for Terri? Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for
Life, Fr. Thomas Euteneuer of Human Life International, EWTN, and many
Catholic lay groups. They made the pilgrimage to Terri’s hospice
to plead for life. Not one bishop visited her even as she became a national
icon against euthanasia of the endangered disabled. Ironically, it was
Caesar, in the person of the Bush brothers and Republican members of the
national and state legislatures, who fought hardest to save Terri. They
spoke with a roar, while God’s voice on earth, the hierarchy of
the Church, was a whimper.