The Culture of Death Marches On

A bleak day. A black day. Barring some outside intervention, today at 1:00 pm Terri Schiavo's feeding tube will be removed and her slow-motion execution will begin. Terri will die one of the most horrible death imaginable - death by starvation and dehydration, in a hospital bed, surrounded by doctors and nurses who could help but do nothing, her parents, screaming at the chance to merely feed their daughter, barred at the gate by the twin sentinels of Law and Medicine. More than anything else I've experienced, today makes me ashamed to be studying the law. If the law cannot help a woman like Terri Schiavo, if it indeed condemns her to death, then all its claims of civilization and humanism are a cruel joke. If this is the law, the law is not worth a damn.

St Maximillian Kolbe, your tormentors tried to kill you, too, by starvation, leaving you two weeks in your cell without food or water. By the power of God, you were sustained, and they were forced to murder you with their own hands. O, good Saint Maximillian, be with your sister in this dark hour.

Weep, friends, but do not lose hope. Dark days are these, and darker yet may come, but the ultimate defeat of the Enemy is assured. His victories are fleeting, his triumphs crumble into dust.


May God be with her.