A Sober Reflection on Terri Schiavo
But supposing we still believe, despite the strong weight of evidence, that Mrs. Schiavo remains conscious at some level and might someday lead a normal life. The question then becomes not “What is the right thing to do,” but “Who is to decide?” As in so many human affairs, it is easier to have moral knowledge than knowledge of facts. We do know that, in our tradition, spouses are next of kin and empowered by law to make decisions when their wife or husband is incapable. That is why Mr. Schiavo, when the physicians concluded the case to be hopeless, was free to decide his wife’s fate. To change this legal tradition, in the heat of a passionate case, is a perilous undertaking.
I do not know what Mrs. Schiavo’s husband ought to do, but I do know that the decision belongs to him and not to either Jeb or George Bush. To those who wish to defend physical existence for its own sake at any cost, this will seem like Pilate’s decision. They are wrong. Pilate shirked his responsibility as Roman procurator by giving in to the mob. He should not have allowed the execution of Jesus, but neither should he have overturned both Roman and Jewish laws in order to strip families of their legal rights. The analogy, used with increasing frequency, between Mrs. Schiavo and Christ is blasphemous on many counts. She is not the God who willingly accepted death in order to redeem mankind. She is only a poor, frail mortal, like the rest of us, and her condition and death, so far from being a willing sacrifice, is the result, apparently, of binge dieting.
We also know, from our moral and legal traditions, that it can never be safe to entrust such a decision to the self-seeking politicians who seek public office, whether as state legislator, governor, congressman, or president, and that the only step more perilous than entrusting politicians with the power of life and death over members of our family is to give such power to the most dangerous enemies of morality and religion: federal judges. The Republican strategy, even if it had not been revealed in a GOP Senate memo as a cynical ploy, is subversive of the constitutional order of the United States and of what moral order is left in our society.
That much, a well-intentioned pagan might have said, but, for Christians, there is another dimension to this question. Liberal nonbelievers, who believe that “this is all there is,” may be pardoned for their hysterical attachment to physical life. This makes the non-Christian willingness to practice abortion and euthanasia all the more terrifying in its implications. For them, other people’s lives are mere commodities to be used when they are convenient, discarded when they are not.
Christians know better. They know, not only that life is a precious gift, but also that it is not all there is. There was a time when believers gratefully accepted even martyrdom because it was a chance to live and die for their faith. Life can and ought to be beautiful, and we who believe that God looked at His creation and saw that it was good cannot contemn the joy and beauty of everyday life. But we also know that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. We are sojourners here, like the Hebrews in the land of Egypt. Our home is elsewhere.
Mrs. Schiavo’s parents have the right and duty to do what they can for their daughter, but the rest of us—and, by the rest of us, I include Bill Frist, Tom Delay, George Bush, and the Vatican spokesmen who so cavalierly intrude themselves into legal and constitutional matters they do not understand—have no business. Playing politics with a dying woman, even if it advances the pro-life cause or expands the electoral base of the Republican Party, is contemptible.
The basic moral problem lies with Mr. Schiavo himself, and with a society that turns a blind eye to his adultery or bigamy. He has effectively repudiated his first wife, and, if Jeb Bush and the Florida legislature wished to do anything productive, they would stiffen laws protecting marriage and strip people like Mr. Schiavo of their power to act on behalf of their wives. It is not judges who need more power, but families.
I do not propose to legislate for the people of Florida, but there are any number of useful measures that might be passed in response to this agonizing case. Apart from stripping adulterers of spousal rights, they could specify a line of authority passing from parents to siblings to aunts and uncles, and so on, with a final provision for a family council to be made up of a group of the nearest living relatives who can be found. Admittedly, a handful of cousins may not take their responsibility very seriously, but even a long-lost cousin is more closely attached to me than any judge or politician.
Every decent American must feel sympathy for poor Mrs. Schiavo and her parents, but thousands of people die every day, and 50 years from now—a mere twinkling of a star—all of us will be dead: the Schiavos, the Schindlers, even the Bushes. If Mr. Schiavo is, in fact, murdering his wife, he will hardly be the first husband to get away with such a crime on one or another technicality. In 2003, 599 people were murdered in Chicago alone. Although the homicide rates have taken a drop in recent years, the United States leads the way in the developed world. We can take comfort that South Africa, Russia, and the Baltic republics are even more homicidal. Nonetheless, judges and parole boards continue to put dangerous felons and psychotics back on the streets. I wish that the Vatican spokesmen who want to change the laws of these United States from the safe distance of Italy (a country with one-fifth the per capita homicides as the United States), would express as much concern about a criminal justice system that, for a variety of reasons—liberal theories of penology, minority sensitivities, political corruption—refuses to protect American citizens from murder. Yet it is to these judges—the class with the most blood on its hands—that we are expected to turn for protection. Every preventable murder is a travesty of justice, and every intentional murder that goes unpunished—i.e., does not end with the execution of the murderer—is a sin crying out for vengeance.
Christians are right to be disturbed by the culture of death that has made abortion and euthanasia not only acceptable but legal and is well on the way to legitimating that form of homicide that goes by the name “assisted suicide.” But Christians should also bear in mind that we are not called upon to keep our mortal bodies running for as long as possible—indeed, the saints were always somewhat careless in this regard. We need to lead moral lives, accepting our responsibilities, both those we have inherited and those we have undertaken willingly, in the knowledge that we are preparing for another, better life. Mrs. Schiavo, in her current condition, cannot get on with this, the most important business of life. Her parents and friends who have told us she was a good Christian woman can be confident that she is passing on to a better life. If we do not believe this, then what do we believe? ~Thomas Fleming
I am very grateful that Dr. Fleming has taken the time to provide this very thoughtful and serious reflection on this suddenly very public controversy. There is not too much that I can add to his sober reflection on the matter, but I will second his observation that the travails of this poor woman are not our business. Neither is her case properly the business of the state or federal government.
I would like to add a few observations about the political response to this poor woman’s case. It is inconceivable that the very advocates of this week’s federal meddling would tolerate it were similarly intrusive actions were taken by a Democratic Congress and President for one of their new adopted causes. It ought to be beyond the pale for every conservative that their representatives would engage in such blatantly unconstitutional and arbitrary lawmaking–the very sort they decry and attribute to ideological activism when done by others–and it is simply absurd that the proponents of the butchery in Iraq can speak of the sanctity of life with any seriousness at all. What we have seen over the past week is a sort of “bleeding-heart conservatism” that is neither truly charitable or conservative: it is the sentimental demagoguery of a democratic politics in which rational appeals, discourse and standards of law are increasingly irrelevant in comparison to the emotional appeal to the crowd.
It is, in a way, premised on the same “pornography of compassion” Dr. Fleming details in his book, The Morality of Everyday Life, and which he recently applied to the overwrought and unreal claims of profound caring for the tsunami victims, as if we can be truly involved and concerned for her life in anything more than a general way when we see her in videos and on the front page of newspapers. Rather than granting that it may be time to let this woman rest in peace, that she might receive the consolations of the Lord, quite a few conservative Christians seem to have decided that this is an occasion for political mobilisation and activism.
I have also heard it said by various know-nothing “conservative” radio hosts that “we” are all somehow going to be complicit in Mrs. Schiavo’s death if “we” do not “do something” to stop it, as if “we” could possibly come to a more sane conclusion in a few days that years of legal deliberation failed to provide. This call to “do something” is the childish reasoning of the globalist humanitarian who tells us that “we” are obliged to help people in the Sudan, or Iraq, or wherever, or that “we” are responsible for the plight of someone on the other side of the world.
We can pray for Mrs. Schiavo, but I can no more pretend that I am deeply involved in her life than I was in the life of any of these cause celebres. Who, then, am I to render judgement in a matter that is legally and more or less properly entrusted to the woman’s legal guardian? We have seen something of this hysterical political act before in the Elian Gonzalez soap opera, which was another overwrought, media-hyped event that would otherwise have been an unfortunate tragedy to be handled among the boy’s family and the appropriate authorities.
The players making the racket are much the same, if not entirely identical, and are as misguided this time around. Then it was irate conservatives who would sooner keep a boy from his father than accept his return to dreaded Cuba. Now it is a band of enthusiasts who would sooner scrap the rule of law and the rulings of the courts than give up on Mrs. Schiavo, not for her sake, but for what she represents as a symbol of their own cause. Mr. Schiavo is undoubtedly disreputable and dishonourable, but his shamelessness has only been matched and fed by the shameless exploitation of a woman’s private plight and suffering by the legions of supposedly deeply concerned onlookers and the scavenger journalists who have helped transform this private affair into a national controversy.
6 Responses to “A Sober Reflection on Terri Schiavo”
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While not many of the arguments for preserving Terri Shiavo’s life have been very good, in fact, I’ve found them to be rather abysmal in that the rely on arguments which the culture of death is glad to have them use. Arguing whether or not Terri Shiavo is or is not PVS, or has received acceptable medical examination reduces the argument to contingencies which in the final analysis are irrelevant.
If she is PVS, does it become acceptable to lop off her head? Or if she has received what is acceptable medical examinations, does it then become acceptable to lop off her head?
Thomas Fleming’s argument reduces down to “Mrs. Schiavo, in her current condition, cannot get on with this, the most important business of life.â€, thus it is acceptable to lop off her head, which is nothing more, and nothing less than a quality of life argument. The same argument the Mercy Killers use when they speak of “Life devoid of valueâ€. With value in Fleming’s eyes being “important businessâ€.
But life has intrinsic worth, and is not dependent on it having value or “important business†to attend to. Life is a good per se. And thus “Thou shall not kill†is not qualified, nor can killing be intended. Life can only be take in accord with the principle of double effect, but where is the double effect in Fleming’s argument? He doesn’t give one.
There are three distinct parts to what Dr. Fleming said in his initial article and in the subsequent discussion that followed. 1) It may be permissible, under Catholic teaching, to discontinue feeding and hydration under the specific circumstances that seem to apply here. If an artificial mechanism is keeping the body alive, this is rather different from deliberately “lopping off her head,” and I think he would say that were one to do such violence to a body, even one as far gone as hers or even to a dead body, then this would obviously be reprehensible and wicked. That is not what is happening. (Were she demonstrably conscious, but unable to move, this would be something else; were she conscious, but in terrible pain, this would again be something very different. Continuing to nourish an insensate body seems rather worse than pointless–it is perverse.) Here his contempt for a “right to existence” position is palpable, and I agree with him as far as this goes. It is not, as far as I can tell, a question of “quality of life” but whether there is any life at all. If he has erred in conveying what Catholic doctrine is on the subject, then that would be something worth knowing. It seems a reasonable conclusion. 2) The law is presently on Mr. Schiavo’s side, as I have known from the first moment I ever heard about this case, even though Dr. Fleming admits in the article and elsewhere in the discussion that he is a horrible husband and that what is happening might still be willful murder. His argument here is that the law ought to secure marriage and families more, not less, to prevent better these sorts of bizarre circumstances from arising in the first place. So, on the specifically legal and political questions, he accepts that the husband has the right to make the decision, even though he considers it possible Schiavo is making the wrong decision, and that it is generally none of our (that is, strangers’) business. (This is the real, contested issue, and on this it seems to me there is no real argument, only a great deal of gnashing of teeth by those who either do not know or cannot understand the rule of law.) 3) This controversy has arisen from the moral cesspool of this country, in which marriage, children and obligations have all become disposable. The state might do something productive and prosecute adulterers and bigamists to discourage the Michael Schiavos of the world from taking advantage of the system.
Taken all together, Dr. Fleming is not making a “quality of life” argument, as I said, but questions whether such a state is even life. In the terms that C.S. Lewis might put it, such an existence is no longer really even bios, much less zoe.
(Perhaps I have not thought enough on this, but it seems that if the body is actually thoroughly incapable of expressing the consciousness and spirit of a person it is no longer life even in a merely animal sense. Being is known and realised through activity–this is ancient and patristic teaching. If there is neither the physical possibility of expressing conscious physical or mental activity, is this any longer an integrated human life of body and soul? The implication of being an integrated being and accepting the Incarnate Word as God is that body and soul are both needed and important in living a human life, and if the body has essentially ceased being an instrument of that life I am not sure why we should cling so tightly to it. At this point, it may not be life that is being preserved, but simply flesh, which seems to be the last thing with which Christians should be concerned, as I am trying to remind myself as Orthodox Lent continues. I was troubled with this conclusion, however, when I read a letter from Metropolitan Iakovos of the Greek Archdiocese stating in no uncertain terms that there was never any circumstance in which what is happening to Mrs. Schiavo could be considered in any way acceptable. I am compelled to take this statement very seriously, but I have to wonder how nourishing the body by artificial means does not constitute “artificial and mechanical means.”)
Here is Metropolitan Iakovos’ conclusion:
We acknowledge that there are times when artificial life support is more expressive of a fear of death than concern for loved ones in tragic circumstances. We affirm that in light of the body functioning only by artificial and mechanical means, when it is unable to sustain life on its own in any manner, the cessation of such means is often acceptable, since this is not actually causing death. We do not view feeding and hydration in such terms, for in the case of Terri Schiavo and others who are in similar conditions, death is not imminent as long as the body is nourished.
Therefore, the removal of Mrs. Schiavo from feeding tubes so as to hasten her death can in no way be accepted or supported. Doing so demonstrates a blatant lack of wise stewardship of God’s sacred gift of life and an extraordinary means of hastening her death by starvation.
Reply to 1) The artist is in a state of potency to his art while he is sleeping. Or the blind man is in a state of potency to seeing, but if we remove this privation he shall see. All men by nature are sighted, even blind men, they simply happen to be in a state of privation to that which is natural to men.
Likewise Terri Shiavo is in a state of privation, just as the blind man is. There is a material defect, that if corrected would take her from a state of potency to a state of act. Thus she would go from potentially walking and talking to actually walking and talking. Thus she is not dead by any means, but only in a state of privation via material defect.
Thus his argument is very much one of quality of life, since she is fully living. Is a sleeping man less alive while he is sleeping? Or in some manner dead. He is certainly in a state of potency. Terri Shiavo is dead to the world in the same manner as we refer to those who are sleeping as dead to the world. This is not death in fact, but death by analogy to signify some aspect of the quality which is sleep.
Reply to 2) This argument by Fleming falls under denial of the principle of subsidiarity since if a man is incapable of acting in accord with that which is proper to his station, then that which is more perfect may step in over him and correct the defect in the less perfect. This defect in the less prefect makes it the “business†of the more perfect. Inviolable rights only pertain to prudential judgement. Killing does not fall under prudential judgement. A man may prudently choose the method to educate his children, but he cannot prudently choose whether they should live or not.
Reply to 3) Is an argument against divorce and its consequences. It may be relevant in proving unfitness in Michael Shiavo to act as husband. And may likewise cause one to use prudence in whether or not to petition to more perfect to act according to its proper function, since it cannot be expected to act properly. But it is not an argument which is more than contingent to a given circumstance. But a contingent cannot disprove a universal.
Adding on to my reply to 2). Whether it is the “rule of law” matters not in the least if the law violates that which is proper to law. Laws only have standing as law in so far as they are in accord to that which is proper to law. Thus a ‘law’ to promulgate murder is not a law in fact, but only has the appearance of a law, just as a tyrant only has the appearance of a monarch. Justness proves the law. Law does not prove justness.
A ‘right’ is a duty to act in a just manner. Thus my right to life signifies in others a duty to not kill me. Likewise Michael Shiavo’s ‘right’ signifies a duty in him to act according to that duty which is based justice.
What is ordinary for Terri Shiavo, is not the same as what is ordinary for an Eskimo living in an igloo on the arctic circle. Food and water via machine is ordinary care in Florida, not extraordinary care. The ordinary care a child receives when hit by a car in Florida is not the same as what constitutes ordinary care for an Indian peasant in the deep forests of Brazil. Treating Terri Shiavo as if she is that Indian peasant is what is extraordinary, not the care she was receiving.
If nothing else, the mere fact that she received such care and for such an extended time makes it ordinary.
But I do wonder if time plays a role in causing the ordinary to become extraordinary? And if it does play a role as cause, then it would seem that it would be the prudence of the Husband or nearest relative which must be relied on to determine when it becomes extraordinary. And what else can cause the ordinary to become extraordinary.
Fleming’s argument for quality of life violates subsidiarity because it is not based in prudential judgement and double effect, but determining extraordinary care is.
Daniel writes: “Perhaps I have not thought enough on this, but it seems that if the body is actually thoroughly incapable of expressing the consciousness and spirit of a person it is no longer life even in a merely animal sense.”
To defer to Aristotle: the soul is the principle of life in that which is living. Thus, whatever is alive has a soul, and I think we would all agree that, until recently, Terri Schiavo was alive. So it would seem that Terri still possessed a soul.
But the soul is known by its powers and operations, which are exercised through the body. Thus, if no powers or operations are identifiable, then the presence of the soul in the body is at best doubtful. On the other hand, if at least one operation of the soul can be detected, then the presence of the soul must be affirmed.
The reason this is important is that, today, we possess the means to give bodies the appearance of life without them necessarily being alive. We can pump blood through them, force air into their lungs, etc., and because we can do this, those with no understanding of the soul might be tempted to say that such a body is alive. However, as Aristotle says, the soul is a principle–it is the *cause* of life in that which lives. Consequently, life is only properly predicated of those bodies which possess an intrinsic cause of their being alive; i.e those bodies which perform the proper functions of the soul on their own.
Thus, if a human body can be observed to be growing, feeding, moving locally, sensing, or reasoning on its own (which are the operations belonging to the human soul), that person is quite properly said to be alive and in possession of his or her human soul. True, not all of the soul’s operations may be capable of being exercised due to defects in the body, but that person still retains his or her fully human soul. Souls aren’t swapped out for lesser ones as their bodies take damage. Therefore, since such a person is in possession of a human soul, that person is also properly called human.
I might point out that although the intellective power of the soul is what sets man apart from the plants and animals, and hence that when a body is incapable of exercising the intellective act we are wont to say it has “become animal” or “become vegetable,” nevertheless *all* the powers of the human soul remain in potentiality in the soul, such that we might with equal justice (or injustice) deny humanity to a paralyzed person–i.e. one who can’t move locally.