Defiantly Unrepentant

by Thomas A. Droleskey

One would think that the Most Reverend Robert N. Lynch, the Bishop of Saint Petersburg, Florida, would either come out fully in support of Mrs. Terri Schindler-Schiavo's right to the provision of food and water or at least let the very flawed statement of the Florida bishops issued on February 28, 2005, stand on its own. Defiantly unrepentant of his past insistence that the matter of Mrs. Schiavo's right to nutrition and hydration was a "family matter" that had to be "resolved" in the context of a consideration of "burdens," including "financial burdens," to the family members, Bishop Robert Lynch issued the following statement on March 1, 2005:

The bishops of Florida have once again addressed the issue of the withdrawal of the artificial feeding tube from Terri Schiavo. As in the past, I join them in addressing this complex and tragic situation. As the local bishop and pastor for all the family parties involved, I would like to add the following. At the end of the day (the judicial, legislative days) the decision to remove Terri’s artificial feeding tube will be that of her husband, Michael. It is he who will give the order, not the courts or certainly the governor or legislature or the medical personnel surrounding and caring for Terri. In other words, as I have said from the beginning of this sad situation, the decision will be made within a family. A significant part of that family feels they are outside of the decision-making process and they are in great pain and suffering mightily.

I urge and pray that before the finality, one last effort be made for mediation. Normally, at the end of life, families of the person in extremis agree that it is time to allow the Lord to call a loved one to Himself, feeling that they have done all they possibly might to provide alternatives to death, every possible treatment protocol which might be helpful has been attempted. There is a peace. This will not happen in this instance because of the seeming intractability of both sides. I beg and pray that both sides might step back a little and allow some mediation in these final hours. The legacy of Terri’s situation should not be that of those who love her the most loathing the actions of one another but of a heroic moment of concern for the feelings of each other, guided by moral and ethical considerations, with a single focus of achieving the best result for Terri. I ask the Catholics of the Diocese of St. Petersburg in the waning days of Lent to pray hard to the “Author of All Life” for Terri and for her family.

This reprehensible statement from a Successor of the Apostles adds further insult to the injuries suffered by Terri Schindler-Schiavo and those who have been striving with all of the strength provided by Our Lord's ineffable graces to save her from an unjust and immoral execution under terms of an illicit law on the statute books in the State of Florida. Bishop Lynch is in effect saying that Michael Schiavo has the right to murder his wife, who is no more near death than any of us, under the cover of a despicable law. He is chastising Florida Governor Jeb Bush for having intervened in 2003 to convince the Florida State Legislature to pass "Terri's Law," which saved Mrs. Schiavo's life at that time as she was six days into the process of being starved and dehydrated to death. He is indirectly chiding Renato Cardinal Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for the Justice and Peace, for saying that Terri Schiavo's execution would be an advance for legalized euthanasia in the United States and for saying that Terri Schiavo must not in fact be starved and dehydrated to death. And Bishop Lynch refuses to personally acknowledge that Pope John Paul II has specifically repudiated his own employment of utilitarian factors to attempt to justify the starvation and dehydration of brain-damaged patients.

It is thus necessary to re-state things that many of us have been stating for several years now. As Bishop Lynch is demonstrating himself to be defiantly unrepentant in his support for an action that is contravened by the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law, this review is sadly necessary:

First, this is not a complex case. Terri Schindler-Schiavo has an absolute right to food and water that is not contingent upon her ability to recover from the trauma that caused her injury fifteen years ago. Pope John Paul II specifically noted that the consideration of "probabilities" of recovery are forbidden to be used to justify the withdrawal of food and water. This matters not to Bishop Robert N. Lynch.

Second, there are no "discussions" that are to be had in this case. A Successor of the Apostles should be standing firmly with one of his sheep who is about to starved and dehydrated death, calling one and all to cooperate with the graces won for us by the shedding of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross to see that part of their own salvation depends on giving to Terri Schindler-Schiavo the care we would give to Our Lord Himself. This matters not to Bishop Robert N. Lynch, who has spoken or written not one blessed word about redemptive suffering. Not once has Bishop Lynch uttered the following: "No cross we are asked to bear is the equal of what one of our least venial sins did to Our Lord in His Sacred Humanity on the wood of the Holy Cross. We are helping Christ to redeem the world when we offer up our sufferings to Him through His Most Blessed Mother's Immaculate Heart. Let us bear our crosses with love and never count the cost. We will be repaid a hundredfold in eternity."

Third, the provision of food and water is not, as Pope John Paul II noted on March 20, 2004, "medical treatment." This matters not to Bishop Robert N. Lynch, who has not repudiated his own August 12, 2003, statement that the provision of food and water by tubes is considered to be extraordinary means of medical care.

Fourth, there is only one outcome from the removal of food and water from Mrs. Terri Schindler-Schiavo: her death. The binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law forbid the taking of any action which has as its only and immediate end the death of an innocent human being. These precepts are immutable. Mrs. Schiavo will not die at this time, barring a heart attack or some illness from which she may not recover, as long as she is fed and hydrated.

Fifth, no human being has any right in the Divine positive law or the natural law to starve himself to death. No human being has the right in the Divine positive law or the natural law to delegate to another the "power" to starve and dehydrate him in the event he is unable to speak following an unexpected illness or accident.

Sixth, as has been noted endlessly, no human institution of civil governance has the authority found in the Divine positive law or the natural law to enact or to enforce any statute that "permits" the withdrawal of food and water, which is, as Pope John Paul II noted in Evangelium Vitae in 1995 and in his March 20, 2004, statement an act of "euthanasia by omission."

Seventh, the case of Terri Schindler-Schiavo is not about "understanding the feelings" of others. It is about absolute and unwavering fidelity to the Fifth Commandment and to the performance of the Corporal Works of Mercy. Terri Schindler-Schiavo stands once more on the precipice of being starved and dehydrated to death. This act of murder--and it is nothing other than murder sanctioned by law--is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance. And what do we find Mrs. Schiavo's bishop doing? Telling people to tamp down their rhetoric and to understand the feelings of all involved. This is not a matter of feelings. This is a matter of obedience to God's law and to the administration of basic physical care and of Christian compassion to a woman who is in need of both. The name Schiavo means "slave" in Italian, I am told by the multilingual Father Patrick J. Perez. Terri Schindler-Schiavo is the slave of Michael Schiavo's decision to use an unjust law to play God and she is also the slave of a bishop who says that Mr. Schiavo has the "right" to make that decision. Feelings, indeed.

Eighth, Bishop Robert N. Lynch is going to be complicit in the execution of Terri Schindler-Schiavo. Rather keep a prayerful vigil in front of the hospice where she lies, he writes of Michael Schiavo, the faithless husband who has fathered two children out of wedlock and who boasts of having a "fiancee" while still sacramentally and legally married to her, and his "right" to make the decision to keep her alive or to kill her. Bishop Lynch will stand before God at the moment of his Particular Judgment with the blood of Terri Schindler-Schiavo dripping on his hands if he does not repent of his truly diabolical contempt for the immutable law of God that forbids any action that directly causes the death of an innocent human being regardless of the "intentions" of those involved. And he is responsible for reaffirming those sheep in his flock who trust in his false assessment of the facts and the principles at work in this case, thus helping other people to "feel" at peace when they decide to dispatch their own relatives or to make provisions for themselves to be so "dispatched" by means of  the terms contained in a "living will."

Bishop Robert N. Lynch has demonstrated over and over again that he is a law unto himself. He is the product of the doctrinal and liturgical revolutions of the past forty years. He makes statements that are totally at odds with the received teaching that the God-Man entrusted to His Mystical Bride, Holy Mother Church, in the Deposit of Faith and yet continues to be kept in place as a diocesan ordinary. He has demonstrated his contempt for Solemn Eucharistic Adoration, ignoring the exhortations of the current pontiff to promote this traditional practice of the Catholic Church, dismissing the fact that there are a few of his brother bishops who also promote the very thing he found so "problematic" in the Diocese of Saint Petersburg five years ago. If this does not constitute part of our genuine State of Emergency in the Church in her human elements at present, I truly do not know what will convince people to believe that most of our bishops have lost the Catholic Faith and are in the grip of demons.

As always, we fly unto the patronage of Our Lady. We pray for Bishop Lynch's conversion to the Catholic Faith at the same time we pray that his sheep reject and resist his consistently un-Catholic statements in the case of Terri Schindler-Schiavo. And we continue to pray that this Holy Father or one of his immediate successors will consecrate Russia to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, thus ending the spread of the errors of Russia, which are really the errors of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church. In the meantime, we have to make reparation for our own many sins, which have added in no small measure to the problems we face in the Church and the world, trusting that our efforts to proclaim the truth in these almost unprecedented times in the Church's history will help in some small way to plant the seeds for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and thus of the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King.

Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, pray for all of the bishops of the Catholic Church.

Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, pray for the restoration of Tradition within Holy Mother Church.

Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro, fierce foe of the Masonic revolutionaries in Mexico, pray the conversion of those bishops who have the Masonic spirit of naturalism burning with such a fever pitch in their hearts and souls.

 

An Afterword from Anne Catherine Emmerich

Consider this vision that Anne Catherine Emmerich had on June 1, 1821:

"Among the strangest things that I saw, were long processions of bishops. Their thoughts and utterances were made known to me through images issuing from their mouths. Their faults towards religion were shown by external deformities. A few had only a body, with a dark cloud of fog instead of a head. Others had only a head, their bodies and hearts were think like vapors. Some were lame; others were paralytics; others were asleep or staggering.

"I saw what I believe to be nearly all the bishops of the world, but only a small number were perfectly sound. I also saw the Holy Father--God-fearing and prayerful. Nothing left to be desired in his appearance, but he was weakened by old age, and by much suffering. His head was lolling from side to side, and it dropped onto his chest as if he were falling asleep. He often fainted and seemed to be dying. But when he was praying, he was often comforted by apparitions from Heaven. Then, his head was erect, but as soon as it dropped again onto his chest, I saw a number of people looking quickly right and left, that is, in the direction of the world.

"Then, I saw that everything that pertained to Protestantism was gradually gaining the upper hand, and the Catholic religion fell into complete decadence. Most priests were lured by the glittering but false knowledge of young school-teachers, and they all contributed to the work of deception.

"In those days, Faith will fall very low, and it will be preserved in some places only, in a few cottages and in a few families which God has protected from disasters and wars."

Quotes found in Yves Dupont's Catholic Prophecy book, which was published by TAN and Books Publishers in 1970.