The
Devil’s Playground
This world demands a grim and bitter zeal
for unremitting joy and restless mirth,
condemned to lifeless feasts without appeal
and chained to gold whose wealth is heir to dearth.
No respite comes to ease the mounting weight
of merry hours required by harsh delights
to fill a frantic hunger none can sate
‘tho’ lab’ring through unending thrilling nights.
Here reigns no tyrant wielding fearsome goad
upon a throne with stolen crown and rod;
these willing slaves were souls, not bought but sold,
who gained the earth yet lost themselves and God.
The bars around this prison bear the shape
of fleshless smiles where dead men seek escape.
22 March 2005
Holy Tuesday
Demiceli’s Ristorante, Westminster, California
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. - Hell’s
welcome mat. (Dante)
Now that Mrs. Terri Schiavo has died, we must come to grips with some
harsh realities. A pro-life governor failed to save her. A pro-life
president failed to save her. The Pope, calling him “pro-life”
would be an insulting redundancy, failed to save her. None doubts
the good will of those three very powerful men. None believes they
were anything but sincere in the efforts they mounted to have Mrs.
Schiavo’s life spared. But there is no doubt that they failed.
Popular sentiment in the United States and around the world failed
to save Mrs. Schiavo. It is a disgusting fact that the preponderance
of public opinion was in favor of the death by starvation and dehydration
of this child of God. The mob mentality that has legalized or decriminalized
abortion in every country on earth has won another victory. Euthanasia
is now an approved weapon in the hands of satan and his minions on
earth. Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, is riding
fast on the path made smooth by child murder, assisted suicide, and
mercy killing.
No help came to Mrs. Schiavo by way of legislative action or judicial
review. The Constitutions of the State of Florida and of the United
States of America were invoked as guaranteeing the absolute right
of Mr. Michael Schiavo, the husband of the victim, to refuse the basic
necessities of life to someone in the name of love. Clearly, jurisprudence
in the United States of America is firmly on the side of death for
the innocent. Unborn babes, aged adults, and ill or injured persons
of any age have absolutely no recourse to the legal system of this
country for protection from being actively murdered. Justice has been
perverted to mete out death to the guiltless.
Bishop Lynch, the prelate of the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg,
where this murder occurred, emphatically repeated several times his
opinion that the final decision of life and death for Mrs. Schiavo
lay in the hands of Mr. Schiavo. The conclusion reached by Mr. Schiavo
that his wife must die was lamented by His Excellency only insofar
as it brought no peace to the Schiavo family and their in-laws, the
Schindlers, parents and siblings of Mrs. Schiavo. Not only did the
Bishop not intervene to prevent the murder of a member of his flock,
he made it plain that he agreed with whatever action Mr. Schiavo would
take. The overriding consideration was not the life of an innocent,
but the assertion of the will of a man guilty of public adultery,
fornication, and inflicting bastardy on the offspring of his illicit
union.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Pope, the President, and a Governor could
not save Terri Schiavo. Most citizens of this country were entirely
indifferent to her, and many were hostile to the idea of preserving
her life. The local bishop where this travesty took place allied himself
with the faithless spouse in whose hands the governmental jurisdictions
placed the fate and wellbeing of a helpless victim. Nothing in our
legal system or form of government stood in the way of this death
sentence being carried out. All of the efforts of the pro-life movement
of the last third of a century to stem the tide of 1½ million
abortions each year in the United States alone, to prevent the bane
of assisted suicide from haunting the thoughts of ill persons struggling
to maintain hope in the face of death, and to remove from consideration
the notion that vultures who would kill a human being are performing
act of mercy, come down to the harsh fact, the unavoidable reality,
the shameful indictment that we utterly failed to save one human life
given two weeks, millions of citizens’ desire, huge media coverage,
and the will of the Governor of the State of Florida, the Congress
of the United States of America, the President of the United States
of America, and the Vicar of the Son of God.
This failure is a failure of the principles on which this nation is
founded, namely, the refusal to be obedient to the sovereignty of
Jesus Christ as King of Heaven and earth, including the United States
of America. This failure is a manifestation of the thoroughly corrupt
system by which is expressed the Godless principles on which this
nation is founded. This failure is proof positive that the vaunted
“separation of Church and state” falsely asserted as Constitutional
law is in fact open hostility to the persons and beliefs of religious
bodies, not least of which is the one true Faith, the Catholic Church,
the Body of Christ. This failure exposes the impossibility of the
pro-life movement attaining its goals so long as the principles, system,
and ethos of this nation are not radically critiqued, denounced, and
replaced. This failure is doomed to be repeated countless times unless
and until people of good will, of conscience, and, most importantly,
of the Faith of Jesus Christ taught through the immemorial dogmas
and doctrines of the Catholic Church come forward and put a stop to
the murder - or die trying.
Under the current state of things we failed to save Terri Schiavo
from her horrific death. If we do not change the hellish status quo
that we have erected, lauded, and defended, hers will be but the most
infamous of innumerable deaths to come. None was able to save Terri
Schiavo from starvation and dehydration. It remains to be seen if
any will labor to save us from ourselves. The epitaph of the United
States of America and all the modern world might well be, Look what
man hath wrought. On Judgement Day, no one will be proud to have that
awful statement pronounced on him by the most just Judge, Almighty
God. The mercy we gave Terri Schiavo will be all the mercy we can
expect on the Last Day.
Father Smith
Sacerdos vagus
Easter Thursday: 31 March 2005
