Our culture of death

People were offended when Pope John Paul II referred to ours as a "culture of death." Yet who can possibly contend that we are not head over heels in love with death? Our love affair with death comes out in the violence of the action movies we love, our television programming (both of which consume unquestionably too much of our time), our guns, our language, our driving habits, our pace of life which has so little time for a cup of coffee with others, for our children, our parents, our personal relationships. Who can ignore the 4000 unborn children we kill each day in abortuaries across the United States (yes, that's 4000 in the USA alone, God bless America)! Now we're clamoring for the right to kill ourselves off at the other end of our lives, to terminate one another's lives and our own when we feel the "quality" we judge appropriate (whatever that is) has ebbed sufficiently out of them.

Our country's legal maneuverings to see that Terri Schiavo (pictured right) has her sorry life snuffed out is but the latest installment in the unfolding saga of our love affair with death. What, we've managed to legally maneuver ourselves into a corner where she can't even be provided water to keep her hydrated as her live slips away (let alone a feeding tube to keep her alive). From what I hear, she's perfectly capable of swallowing water. Thirst is a lower brain function, and she's perfectly capable of feeling thirsty. I understand that the symptoms that arise when one is deprived of water sufficiently closely resemble those of influenza, or the flu. It can be an excruciating way to die-- what did someone think that appropriate during Holy Week or something!?

I have a colleague who teaches biology. He asked me what might happen if he proposed the following experiment in one of his biology labs. They would get a puppy and deprive it of food and water for several ways and simply observe it die, taking notes on their observations. Do you not think the students would not protest such a lab exercise, even if it were perfectly legal? Do you not think someone might not even try to slap a lawsuit on such a professor? ... But we can't legally find a way to save the human life of Terri Schiavo (pictured left) whose lower brain functions are at least as functional as those of any puppy? One of my son's has the following bumper sticker on his Honda Civic: "Being pro-choice is easy when you're not the one being killed." Amen to that. How does the ride feel, my friends, as we gather momentum on the greased skids to hell? Smile. Have a nice day.