While the “Religious Right” is routinely reviled for extremism and lack of Christian charity, the media take less notice of those qualities on the other end of the politico-religious spectrum. Worthy of attention is statement on the Terri Schiavo case bearing the irenic headline, “Have They No Decency? Religious Leaders Call for an End to Selective Morality in Washington”. The 100-plus “leaders” are described by Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy thus:
Signers of the statement included Roman Catholic lesbian activist Mary Hunt of the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, Alliance for Baptists pastor Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance, United Methodist pastor James Lawson of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Disciples of Christ pastor Ken Brooker Langston of the Disciples Justice Action Network, Unitarian Universalist Association President William Sinkford, Quaker Joe Volk of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Chicago Theological Seminary President Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Disciples of Christ feminist theologian Rita Nakashima Brock of the Faith Voices for the Common Good, and American Baptist pastor James Forbes of Riverside Church in New York City.
This group was assembled by the left-wing Center for American Progress, Angry Clintonite John Podesta’s think tank. The most remarkable feature of its declaration is refusal to grant that politicians who attempted to save Terri Schiavo’s life could have been acting in good faith.
How does it come to pass that elected leaders who are sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution now refuse to accept any court’s decision until they find a court that agrees with their position? How does it come to pass that expert medical opinion, along with expert legal opinion, is being cast aside and trodden underfoot in a crass use of piety to usurp judicialprerogatives? . . .
Sadly, we understand all too well how this can come to pass. We see clearly how an excruciating family drama—involving the understandable grief of the parents as well—is being manipulated for narrow political advantage.
In other words, the President and the majority of Congress didn’t really care about what happened to Mrs. Schiavo and didn’t believe their own words about the sanctity of life; they were just making “a crass use of
As proof of their hypocrisy, the statement then presents a laundry list of liberal spending and policy initiatives. Any failure to support these nostrums will, we are informed, demonstrate a lack of “true respect and concern for human dignity and the right of every child, woman, and man to the fullness of life”.
If one wished to play turnabout in this “Question Your Bona Fides” game, it would be easy to ask whether indifference to a concrete case of killing by dehydration doesn’t cast a cloud over the signers’ advocacy of measures to help disabled people in the abstract. Aren’t they a bit like the man who urges his neighbors to write checks to charitable causes but won’t help the cripple who shows up on his own doorstep?
Ultimately, though, casting aspersions on motives back and forth is a profitless contest. The clergypersons and modernist theologians assembled by Mr. Podesta have every right to make religious arguments in favor of denying food and water to helpless women. I’m willing to believe that they write in defense of that view with sincerity, not simply in hopes of gaining narrow political advantage by tarring their political enemies. I would believe it more firmly if “Have They No Decency?” breathed any spirit beyond hatred of those enemies and unreflective scorn for their point of view.
But let me end on a more pleasant note. Mr. Tooley also summarizes a praiseworthy statement, by a minister of one of the most liberal and modernist Protestant denominations, that goes beyond the rights and wrongs of a particular case:
Florida United Methodist Bishop Timothy Whitaker spoke more forthrightly in defense of traditional Christian teachings regarding human life. “A fundamental moral principle consistent with faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ is to always care rather than to kill.”
Whitaker observed that “there are many disabled persons who live by means of a feeding tube,” and that she was more accurately described as “severely disabled” rather than terminally ill.
Placing too much value on mental consciousness to define life’s value would imply a “spiritualistic view” of humans and would threaten the lives of the mentally incompetent, Whitaker warned, and would go against Christian and Jewish beliefs about the importance of the body.
Likewise, Whitaker urged not viewing life as making moral claims by itself, when it is rather God’s “purposes for human beings that make the ultimate moral claims upon us.” He said opposition to abortion should not be based upon a “right to life” but upon God’s call to “care for the most vulnerable.”
A person who is in a “persistent vegetative state” is not a vegetable to her loves ones, Whitaker observed. The love that Mrs. Schiavo’s parents and siblings showed her was of “immense value” and no expert could judge the effect of that love upon even the severely disabled woman, he said. For Christians, this kind of love is a witness to God’s love in Jesus Christ.
“Moral reflection should include consideration of the value of the love of caregivers as well as the condition of the one receiving care,” Whitaker wrote. “I believe it would be better to let her live because she is the beneficiary of abundant love.” He questioned the wisdom of a law that would allow a spouse, especially one “compromised by conflict of interest” like Mr. Schiavo, to be the sole witness to her intentions, without considering the moral claims of other family members.
Whitaker criticized the “individualistic perspective” that believes a person may decide for himself whether or not to live or die, without considering the ability of others to love and care. Such “absolute individual autonomy” could lead to physician-assisted suicide and active euthanasia,” he worried. Christians should introduce “communitarian values” into society that guard against extreme self-determination.
“The church’s mission is not to be the chaplain to a culture of death,” Whitaker concluded, “But to be a witness to the love of God in the world.”
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