Good article for those confused about body/soul dualism.
After Terri Schiavo’s death, questions remain.

Wall Street Journal DAVID B. HART Friday, April 1, 2005

Terri Schiavo has now died, but of course the controversy surrounding her last days will persist indefinitely. Most of the issues raised as she was dying were legal and moral; but at the margins of the storm, questions of a more “metaphysical” nature were occasionally raised in public. For instance, I heard three people on the radio last week speculating on the whereabouts of her “soul.”

One opined that where consciousness has sunk below a certain minimally responsive level, the soul has already departed the body; the other two thought that the soul remains, but as a dormant prisoner of the ruined flesh, awaiting release. Their arguments, being intuitive, were of little interest. What caught my attention was the unreflective dualism to which all three clearly subscribed: The soul, they assumed, is a kind of magical essence haunting the body, a ghost in a machine.

This is in fact a peculiarly modern view of the matter, not much older than the 17th-century philosophy of Descartes. While it is now the model to which most of us habitually revert when talking about the soul–whether we believe in such things or not–it has scant basis in either Christian or Jewish tradition.

The “living soul” of Scripture is the whole corporeal and spiritual totality of a person whom the breath of God has wakened to life. Thomas Aquinas, interpreting centuries of Christian and pagan metaphysics, defined the immortal soul as the “form of the body,” the vital power animating, pervading, shaping an individual from the moment of conception, drawing all the energies of life into a unity.

WorldNetDaily.com

On Good Friday, as Terri Schiavo lay dying of thirst in Woodside Hospice, Gabriel Keys took her a cup of water. Gabriel was arrested, handcuffed and taken away.

Apparently, no one taught Gabriel that you do not disobey a judge’s order, even to bring water to someone dying of thirst. As he is 10 years old, he is probably not yet conversant with the new morality, where a corporal work of mercy can be a crime. Perhaps his parents filled his mind with such subversive texts as, “Whoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones, a cup of cold water” shall not lose eternal life.

For Terri Schiavo will not have died a natural death. She will have been put to death by the state. The coroner’s report should read: This was a state-sanctioned killing of a woman because she was brain-damaged, and the method of execution was by starvation and denial of water. These are methods most of us would protest if imposed on the Beltway snipers.

Numbers change when proper questions are asked.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Polls leading up to the death of Terri Schiavo made it appear Americans had formed a consensus in favor of ending her life. However, a new Zogby poll with fairer questions shows the nation clearly supporting Terri and her parents and wanting to protect the lives of other disabled patients.

The Zogby poll found that, if a person becomes incapacitated and hasn ot expressed their preference for medical treatment, as in Terri’s case, 43 percent say “the law presume that the person wants to live,
even if the person is receiving food and water through a tube” while just 30 percent disagree.
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National Review Online

There was an honest, forthright case for ending the life of Terri Schiavo. It was that her life no longer had any value, for herself or others, and that ending it — the quicker the better — would spare everyone misery. We disagree with that view, holding it wiser to stick with the Judeo-Christian tradition on the sanctity of innocent life. But the people who made this case deserve some credit for straightforwardness.

But while the public may have agreed with the removal of Schiavo’s feeding and hydration tube, apparently there are limits to the public’s willingness to tolerate euthanasia — and apparently its defenders recognized these limits. So we saw euphemism after euphemism deployed to cloud the issues.

Perhaps chief among these was the fiction that we were “letting her die.” On March 18, Schiavo was in no medical danger of death. She was profoundly brain-damaged (although just how profoundly remains unknown), but she was not in a coma or on a respirator. She was not being kept alive by artificial means, any more than small children are kept alive by artificial means when their parents feed them. Her body was functioning, there is some reason to believe she was minimally conscious, and she was responsive to stimuli (it’s been reported she was actually being administered pain medication). She had devoted parents and siblings who were willing to care for her. She could easily have gone on in these conditions for many years. She was not close to dying. For death to arrive, she would have to be killed.

Carol Glatz Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Whoever stands idly by without trying to prevent the death of Terri Schindler Schiavo becomes an accomplice to murder, said Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The death of the severely brain-damaged woman “would represent a homicide in which it is impossible to idly stand by without becoming accomplices,” he said in a March 31 interview with Vatican Radio.

Schiavo died March 31, nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed.
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PINELLAS PARK, Fl., March 31 /Christian Wire Service/ — The following is the text of the statement read by Terri Schindler Schiavo’s sister, Suzanne Vitadamo; and brother, Bobby Schindler, in front of the Woodside Hospice, in Pinellas Park, Florida, at a 4:30 PM, press conference.

As you are aware, Terri is now with God and she has been released from all earthly burdens. After these recent years of neglect at the hands of those who were supposed to protect and care for her, she is finally at peace with God for eternity. We are speaking on behalf of our entire family this evening as we share some thoughts and messages to the world regarding our sister and the courageous battle that was waged to save her life from starvation and dehydration.

We have a message for the volunteers that have helped our family:
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Townhall.com David Limbaugh (archive)

It is just possible, contrary to my original thoughts, that the tragic Schiavo case will not usher in a slippery slope toward euthanasia but cause a double-barreled backlash against both the “Culture of Death” and judicial activism.

To be sure, the legal precedent established in this case, at least in Florida, represents an affirmative devaluation of human life and opens the door to further troubling scenarios, involving the state-sanctioned murder of the inconvenient, based on “quality of life” assessments.

TownHall.com Pat Buchanan (archive)

Terri Schiavo is dead. She did not die a natural death, unless you believe a court order to cut off food and water to a disabled woman until she dies of starvation and thirst is natural.

No, Terri Schiavo was executed by the state of Florida. Her crime? She was so mentally disabled as to be unworthy of life in the judgment of Judge George Greer. The execution was carried out at Woodside Hospice. An autopsy will reveal that Terri’s vital organs shut down for lack of food and water. She did not die of the brain damage she suffered 15 years ago. She was put to death. We have crossed a watershed in America.

Wonder about the belief’s of George Felos, the lawyer of Michael Schiavo and the legal architect behind the starvation of Terri Schiavo? Take a look.

National Review Online Eric Pfeiffer

“I wonder what it would be like to die right now?”

Many of us have asked ourselves this question and Michael Schiavo attorney George Felos is no exception. Unlike most, however, Felos has a story to go along with it.

In his 2002 book Litigation as Spiritual Practice, Felos expresses his belief in the “cosmic law of cause and effect,” in which the human mind is not limited by the constraints of reality. More specifically, if one wants a new car, one could make this dream car manifest “out of the ether.”

His apparent lack of concern for Terri Schiavo’s plight might be better understood in the context of his belief that “[i]n reality you have never been born and never can die.”

Bravo Jessie!

My Way News

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) – As Terri Schiavo entered her 12th full day without food or water, the Rev. Jesse Jackson prayed with her parents Tuesday and joined conservatives in calling for state lawmakers to order her feeding tube reinserted.

The former Democratic presidential candidate was invited by Schiavo’s parents to meet with activists outside Schiavo’s hospice. His arrival was greeted by some applause and cries of “This is about civil rights!”

“I feel so passionate about this injustice being done, how unnecessary it is to deny her a feeding tube, water, not even ice to be used for her parched lips,” he said. “This is a moral issue and it transcends politics and family disputes.”

WASHINGTON, March 29 /Christian Wire Service/ — The National Clergy Council, representing conservative church leaders from Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox and Protestant traditions, today applauds the Reverend Jesse Jackson for his visit to Terri Schiavo’s hospice where she is dying from starvation and dehydration. In comments to the media, Rev. Jackson said at the scene that Mrs. Schiavo is dying of “starvation and dehydration and it is unnecessary,” “cruel” and “immoral.”

The Reverend Rob Schenck said about Rev. Jackson’s visit and remarks, “There is nothing for Jesse Jackson to gain here except respect for having done the right thing. This is a rare expression of moral courage from a partisan and we applaud him heartily for it. We pray that it is taken seriously and acted upon urgently by all those with the power to save Terri’s life.”

Rev. Schenck made his comments in Pittsburgh, PA, where he is recovering from brain surgery and has made calls to congressional leaders pleading with them to intervene at this late hour.

Greek Orthodox leader here: Schiavo ‘deserves to live’ Tuesday, March 29, 2005 Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Metropolitan Maximos of the Greek Orthodox Diocese of Pittsburgh has condemned the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.

“She deserves to live,” Maximos, a respected theologian as well as a bishop, said. “A miracle is always possible for her to be restored from minimum consciousness to full consciousness … I beg all those in charge to consider the plea of her parents, with whom I fully identify.”

In an interview yesterday, Maximos said he regretted not speaking earlier and praised Catholic leaders who had advocated the right to life of the brain-damaged Florida woman.

“Murder is a strong word that nobody wants to use, but that is what it is,” he said of her husband’s decision to remove her source of food and water.

Maximos’ comments followed a Thursday statement from the 1 million-member Orthodox Church in America. “Extraordinary means of prolonging life, as well as extraordinary means of ending life, are inconsistent with wise stewardship of God’s gift of life,” said the OCA.

“This is especially crucial in cases in which no clear consensus has been determined with regard to a person’s state, as in the case of Mrs. Terri Schiavo. As such, the removal of Mrs. Schiavo from feeding tubes as a means of hastening her death can in no way be condoned or supported.”

National Review Online Wesley J. Smith

My debate about Terri Schiavo’s case with Florida bioethicist Bill Allen on Court TV Online eventually got down to the nitty-gritty:

Wesley Smith: Bill, do you think Terri is a person?

Bill Allen: No, I do not. I think having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood. Even minimal awareness would support some criterion of personhood, but I don’t think complete absence of awareness does.

If you want to know how it became acceptable to remove tube-supplied food and water from people with profound cognitive disabilities, this exchange brings you to the nub of the Schiavo case — the “first principle,” if you will. Bluntly stated, most bioethicists do not believe that membership in the human species accords any of us intrinsic moral worth. Rather, what matters is whether “a being” or “an organism,” or even a machine, is a “person,” a status achieved by having sufficient cognitive capacities. Those who don’t measure up are denigrated as “non-persons.”

Allen’s perspective is in fact relatively conservative within the mainstream bioethics movement.

“I think the feeding tube should be reinstated. This is a very tough emotional, ethical, political issue. But you know she is brain impaired, she is not brain-dead. And right now they’re starving her to death. They’re dehydrating her to death, and that raises profound ethical questions. That tube should be reinstated. She is not brain-dead. She’s brain impaired. It’s not right to starve her to death. That’s not right ethically.”

On Tuesday morning, March 29, The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., founder and president of the RainbowPUSH Coalition, plans to visit the Woodside Hospice, where Terri lives.

GREEK ORTHODOX METROPOLIS OF CHICAGO STATEMENT ON THE CASE OF TERRI SCHIAVO

Human life is always precious and sacred. This is a fundamental tenet of the Orthodox Christian tradition. Each and every human being is created in the image of God the Creator, and can never cease to be loved by God. The highest measure of a quality of life is our personal relationship with God, and this relationship endures the best and worst conditions in which human beings may find themselves. It even endures physical death in this age, continuing in the age to come. Orthodox Christians are greatly saddened by the condition of Terri Schiavo, and must be saddened by the decision of other persons to purposely end her life by the withdrawal of the basic care of feeding and hydration.
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