Catholic Sensibility

From an e-mail correspondent: St Blog's seems to be losing its mind over this Terri Schiavo case, no? Yesterday, the Kansas City Star carried a summary via the New York Times of the past fifteen years. Some facts I did not know: - Terri's husband and parents were together on an aggressive and hopeful approach for two and a half years until the lawsuit money came through. Only then did it get ugly. - Terri's in-laws have been getting death threats. The money item is all too predictable. I remember when my Dad's uncle died and left a large estate to charity. The family members wanted my father, as executor, to join them in a legal challenge. Dad disagreed with the decision to give the money away, but he respected his uncle's wishes. There was some bad blood over that one for awhile. I remember the feeding frenzy from relatives who scrambled to haul away stuff from the home when our uncle headed to the nursing home. Money does crazy things to a person, and I'm not surprised Terri's husband and parents let it control their relationship. On another blog, I was reading about how vile the "pro-death" protesters were at the hospice. I just can't buy the notion that St Blog's has the high road morally on this one. I've noted a strange kind of group-think around here. It's not enough to be pro-Terri. You have to be anti-husband, anti-Lynch, anti-media, anti-Democrat, anti something. My antenna quiver about this, and my sense tells me that crazythinking has taken root. That's not to say I don't harbor a doubt or two about Michael Schiavo. But I have more doubts about the whole unravelling of the protest against him, starting with Terri's parents and moving on to bounties and threats against Schiavo's siblings. Another clue was the comment by a sensible St Blog's site host about feeling "exhausted" over this affair. People have good reasons to get exhausted, and one of those reasons is when you're being taken for an emotional ride. I debated getting on the Blogs-for-Terri bandwagon, but something just held me back, something more than the usual St Blog's distrust if your language wasn't just quite right. So is St Blog's "losing it's mind?" Yes. My opinion: The Schindlers were clearly devoted to their daughter and her husband, maybe overly so. Few healthy situations result from married couples living with parents, and fewer result when the parents move hundreds of miles to be with their children. I think Michael gave it a good try for two to three years. Maybe he felt it was time to move on with his life, given that the medical consensus seemed to be that his wife was never going to get any better after two or three years of aggressive therapy. I think money brought ugly to the party. And the ugly has tainted society's real debate about care of the handicapped and/or care of PVS patients and other dying issues. I think Terri's bishop was spot on to encourage reconciliation and the St Blog's commentary critical of him is, to use a technical term, wacked. The Schindlers, especially the dad, seem quite manipulative. Rather than being victims of the Big Bad Media, they've played the media like fine fiddles. They turned a family dispute over money into a public spectacle and they've coopted the real issue with their own inability to let go. Clearly, this inability was in play long before Terri was injured. That's not to say I don't feel badly for these people. I'm sure Terri's parents are crushed and battered by these events. Having ministered to and cared for sick people in my life, I can comprehend the amount of courage, faith, and heroism it would take to hold out for hope against hope. Fifteen years of hoping would make Michael Schiavo a saint. Three years doesn't make him a crumb. But if people were critical of others on the spot for opting out on a long road of heroism, Pius XII would be at the top of more lists. Last opinion: pray for these poor people, but don't give them any more or less than they deserve on the spectrum from saint to devil. I suspect none of them are at either extreme, though all have had their moments skirting one side or another.