U.S. Bishops Fiddled While Terri Burned

[Catholic29]

**

U.S. Bishops 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.******
Source: lesfemmes-thetruth.org/

 

[Lisa4Catholics]

That really makes me ill Perhaps we should write Rome and ask the Holy Father to reprimand Our late Pope made it very clear about Terris situation and said that the feeding tube was NOT to be considered extra ordinary means.He also went on to say that the term vegetative state should not diminish the human dignaty that cannot be taken away due to disability.

 

[bones_IV]

Lisa4Catholics:

That really makes me ill Perhaps we should write Rome and ask the Holy Father to reprimand Our late Pope made it very clear about Terris situation and said that the feeding tube was NOT to be considered extra ordinary means.He also went on to say that the term vegetative state should not diminish the human dignaty that cannot be taken away due to disability.

I agree.

 

[byzmelkite]

The U.S. Conference of Clown Bishops won’t care and the Vatican won’t either. They are all too busy making sure they get their escargot and caviar and fleshly cleaned satin slippers as well as their invitiations to the next Democratic party ball and fundraiser. Nope, we have no bishops for the most part. Just a bunch of clowns.

 

[Traditional_Ang]

byzmelkite:

The U.S. Conference of Clown Bishops won’t care and the Vatican won’t either. They are all too busy making sure they get their escargot and caviar and fleshly cleaned satin slippers as well as their invitiations to the next Democratic party ball and fundraiser. Nope, we have no bishops for the most part. Just a bunch of clowns.

Byzmelkite:

I’m not going to defend the actions of Bishop Lynch, who seems to be guilty as charged, or of any of the other Bishops in the USCCB when they faile to act as shepherds for the faithful committed to their charge.

But I will take exception to your comments about the Vatican. Pope John Paul II made at least 3 public statements on the Terri Schiavi crisis while he was the dying, and even gave an example by allowing the insertion of a feeding tube during the last 2 weeks of his life.

The Vatican also made several statements stating very clearly that what was being done was wrong and that Michael Schiavo needed to allow her to live NO MATTER what the judges decided.

I also don’t think that you inderstand how EPISCOPAL JURISDICTION works in the Catholic Church - We are under Bishops who are under Archbishops. Because of the rules of Episcopal Jurisdiction, Bishops are restrained from doing as you wanted unless they are given permission by Bishop Lynch, Bishop Lynch’s Abp or the Pope.

That includes not being allowed to right to make PUBLIC COMMENTS unless they have been given permission to “cross Jurisdictional Boundaries”. Otherwise, the only people allowed to overrule and publicly correct Bishop Lynch were/are the Archbishop who is directly over him and the Pope himself.

We both know what shape the Pope was in, But we do have every right to ask why Bishop Lynch’s Abp. didn’t overrule or rebuke him and take over when Bishop Lynch refused to act as a shepherd.

Remember, some Bishops are real screw-ups, but most try to do the job that Christ has appointed them to to the best of their abilities.

Our job should be to let the screw-ups know it won’t be tolerated, and to make sure those who act as shepherds (esp. when there’s a personal cost) are encouraged.

If you want, I wrote Bp Lynch a rather “hot” letter. PM me and I’ll PM his contact info and the e-mail to you.

Blessed are they who act to save God’s Little Ones, Michael

 

[Catholic29]

byzmelkite:

The U.S. Conference of Clown Bishops won’t care and the Vatican won’t either. They are all too busy making sure they get their escargot and caviar and fleshly cleaned satin slippers as well as their invitiations to the next Democratic party ball and fundraiser. Nope, we have no bishops for the most part. Just a bunch of clowns.

Now here is an example of a post, which I don’t have any time to reply to.

 

[Brain]

Many bishops are holy men with good will, but sadly some are alas and some are exclusively politicians with big hats

 

[swampfox]

This is the same AmChurch hierarchy that gave us the sex abuse and coverup scandal.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Catholic29:

Now here is an example of a post, which I don’t have any time to reply to.

Praise God that despite your prophecy, you did in fact find the time to reply to it anyway.

With God all things are possible.

Peace,
Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Traditional Ang:

Byzmelkite:

I’m not going to defend the actions of Bishop Lynch, who seems to be guilty as charged, or of any of the other Bishops in the USCCB when they faile to act as shepherds for the faithful committed to their charge.

But I will take exception to your comments about the Vatican. Pope John Paul II made at least 3 public statements on the Terri Schiavi crisis while he was the dying, and even gave an example by allowing the insertion of a feeding tube during the last 2 weeks of his life.

The Vatican also made several statements stating very clearly that what was being done was wrong and that Michael Schiavo needed to allow her to live NO MATTER what the judges decided.

Agreed. I remember hearing statements such as that.

I also don’t think that you inderstand how EPISCOPAL JURISDICTION works in the Catholic Church - We are under Bishops who are under Archbishops. Because of the rules of Episcopal Jurisdiction, Bishops are restrained from doing as you wanted unless they are given permission by Bishop Lynch, Bishop Lynch’s Abp or the Pope.

That includes not being allowed to right to make PUBLIC COMMENTS unless they have been given permission to “cross Jurisdictional Boundaries”. Otherwise, the only people allowed to overrule and publicly correct Bishop Lynch were/are the Archbishop who is directly over him and the Pope himself.

It sounds you are defending the men who were operating the Vatican at the time, for not acting sooner. There is another side to this, though. From what you’re saying, the Church is so overloaded with Red Tape that she is too crippled to move in an effective way to enlist her own managers to get on board to save a human life that the Vatican has specifically ordered must be saved.

That doesn’t make the Church evil, but it makes her lame. Inaction due to red tape has the same result as inaction due to indifference. Perhaps we can construct it so that no living member of the Church can be personally blamed, and that’s OK. Let’s acknowledge that an institution who can’t coordinate such an obvious item as this given the technology of today, is ineffective.

When I worked at Lucent Technologies, I saw how a company operates when they want their people to hear a particular message. They use the telecommunication resources that their company invented to let everybody know. Except for people on business trips, corporate could inform or instruct every employee in the company of a company issue or bulletin within minutes of the time the press release made it to Wall Street. The Church has the same technology available – basically email. If our processes are unusually burdensome because they were designed when communication was done by human runners, then let’s get with it and quit letting a company who failed miserably outshine us at our internal coordination and adherence to timely initiatives.

We both know what shape the Pope was in, But we do have every right to ask why Bishop Lynch’s Abp. didn’t overrule or rebuke him and take over when Bishop Lynch refused to act as a shepherd.

You do have that right, but if you excuse the Church for not acting because the pope was sick, then you are in essence saying we had no pope and therefore no effective leadership at that time. That is not an indictment of individuals, but is of the system. When God asks His Church, “why did you not save Terri,” then the answer, “my boss was sick” just doesn’t somehow seem adequate.
(continued)

 

[AlanFromWichita]

(continued)

Remember, some Bishops are real screw-ups, but most try to do the job that Christ has appointed them to to the best of their abilities.

True, and the responsibility always rests with the people in charge. When I goof up at work, my boss is responsible that I get my job done, so he is also responsible – under the assumption he has adequate management resources – for the work I do. When bishops mess up, it is the pope’s problem, and it’s the pope’s responsibility to fix. If the pope cannot execute his duties in this regard, then what value is it that our Church supposedly has documents in the Vatican that contain the Real Truth?

Our job should be to let the screw-ups know it won’t be tolerated, and to make sure those who act as shepherds (esp. when there’s a personal cost) are encouraged.

If you want, I wrote Bp Lynch a rather “hot” letter. PM me and I’ll PM his contact info and the e-mail to you.

Blessed are they who act to save God’s Little Ones, Michael

I appreciate that you go directly to those involved with your complaints. I agree with you for the most part, except maybe the culpability of the Vatican for these shortcomings, I have more respect for someone who disagrees with me but makes opinions known than someone who has a Perpetual Opinion but only expresses it to those safely out of power so they cannot act on it.

Also just in case anybody wants to email the Vatican, Benedict has his email published on the Vatican web site with email link with pre-filled subject field “Greetings.” If you wish to send greetings or other information, write to him at benedictxvi@vatican.va.

I already wrote to him and suggested he emphasize the apophatic traditions of the Church more to balance out the kataphatic which is taught to the laity. Those teachings, IMO, are often empty because the mystical training to compliment them and learn how to put them into practice rather than relying on human understanding how to implement dogma.

I will not plan on writing to the bishop because I don’t feel like it’s in my jurisdiction. I’d personally write to the pope first.

Hey, maybe benedictxvi email address is nothing but an autodelete-bot, but if I voice a valid concern about the Church through an “official” channel and she doesn’t respond, then her related sins – both what she has done and what she has failed to do – are no longer on my hands.

That said, I fully encourage others who feel motivated to write the bishop to do so, and I will write myself (God willing) if others convince me I’m a wimp or slacker by not doing so.

You know, I wouldn’t mind being on the Committee to Keep the Church in Line if I thought the Church would stand up for individual whistle blowers or deputize us with immunity from local backlash. That would be quite a change from her performance on certainly problems within the Church, whereby once caught in aiding and abetting the enemy it took many years and finally some aggressive lawyers to sue her proverbial “pants” off until she finally took the issue seriously.

For these reasons, I think the Catholic Church would do well to quit pontificating so much on political issues until she can figure out how to get her own politics under control and quit doing further evil because of her inability to police herself. It scares me a lot that we go try to usurp the ominous tools of the government to do work that we cannot even do internally among our own management. We are blind, but we sound off about all the evil in the world – all except the evil we ourselves perpetrate.

When it comes down to it, I think the new pope would also do well to quit whining about his bishops and get them under control using the authority he has rather than the Court of Public Opinion, which undermines their authority further and doesn’t do anybody any good. At the same time, he also needs to quit whining about the sheep; they are no better or worse than the Church in which they were raised. If we have not fed them, or if they have not digested it and we do not adjust, then we have failed in our mission or it was not God’s will that they came into the Church.

Mystical (I’m not planning to actually send it because I’m chicken – so accuse me of being my own worst enemy if you wish ) message to the Holy Father: Please focus on guiding those who you directly employ in line with Church teachings, and then you will be in a stronger position to speak on non-Church societal issues and be viewed by both Catholics and non-Catholics alike as something more than an angry noise source.

Alan

 

[AlanFromWichita]

swampfox:

This is the same AmChurch hierarchy that gave us the sex abuse and coverup scandal.

Remember though, the Church is perfect. It is only some of her middle management that errs, and they are beyond reproach though we can chastise the affected sheep for not being Fully Assenting to the Church. It almost sounds like you’re Blaming the Church, which I trust you weren’t doing. After all, if you don’t like the truth then you have nobody to blame but yourself. :whacky:

Alan

 

[Traditional_Ang]

Alan:

Regarding who to write first, I’m simply trying to follow the procedure laid down by Jesus in the Gospels - He said to try to speak to the offending party directly (and in this case, Bp Lynch was and is the offending party), to get witnesses to a second conversation, and then to bring it to those who are in charge over him.

I think you’ll agree that at Lucent, if someone screwed up at doing something they REALLY SHOULD HAVE DONE, that that person would normally prefer that someone dealt with them directly before taking it to their manager. Have you ever had your manager come up to you and tell you that your co-workers or workers in another group had complained about you and that was the first time you had heard about any complaints? Felt pretty crummy, didn’t it? In fact, I imagine that you would have given the world if just one person had approached you directly and talked to YOU AS A PERSON about whatever it was rather than to your supervisor as a compaint.

I’m just saying to give Bishop Lynch the same consideration.

Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of time to go up the “chain-of command” later if Bp. Lynch chooses not to listen to any of our letters to him.

Regarding Jurisdiction - That was affixed by Canon Law Centuries ago and isn’t broken except in cases of Heresy or Apostacy. That’s partly to insure that priests and people obeyed their Bishops, partly to insure that Bishops. took responsible for the sheep entrusted to their charge and a variety of other “Administrative” reasons.

Sending bishops into other dioceses every time people in those Dioceses have problems with their Bishops would create chaos, unless the Canon Law were modified to state what conditions allowed this to be done and who would be empowered to do the sending. What you’re talking about is a form of “Flying Bishop” or “Alternative Episcopal Jurisdiction”. The Anglican Church is trying that out with mixed results for those orthodox parishes which refuse to accept oversight from Heterodox/Apostate Bishops.

In this case, there was and is an Archbishop who was directly over Bp. Lynch who should have taken care of the situation and done what Bp Lynch obviously didn’t want to do. I can’t see why he failed to do that, and what happened does not reflect to his credit at all.

Many Bishops, esp. those of the USCCB have complained about Pope John Paul II’s meddling in similar situations, saying they were “violations of collegiality” and that they didn’t like the way this made them feel.

You couple this wiht the Fact the Pope John Paul II was extremely ill, and had to be concerned for the welfare of ALL Catholics, and I’m amazed that he did what he did and made the statements that he did.

Please remember, that in spite of the fact that he was on his deathbed and responsible for all the world’s Catholics, Pope John Paul II did more for Terri Schiavo than the Bishop directly responsible for her soul did.

And, when he saw that that wasn’t enough, he asked God to take him home and to give the Church a Pope who could deal with Bishops and Archbishops who refuse to take care of their sheep.

I don’t think any reasonable person can ask for more from a man who was in the condition Pope John Paul II was in.

I hope all of this helps.

Goodnight.

Blessed are they who act to save the lives of the Innocent, Michael

PS: In answer to 2 other concerns of yours - The Pope hasn’t whined about the Sheep - That may have been done by some of the Bishops, but not by the Pope. And, I’m not trying to use public opinion to bring Bishops back into line. I’m trying to use direct correction consistent with the pattern laid down by our Lord Himself. Alan, Could I talk you into lending a hand?