| Cathleen Falsani

Finding hope even in Schiavo’s barbaric death

‘Terri Schiavo dies.”

Those words greeted me as I groggily signed on to my computer first thing Thursday morning.

The news made me want to dive back under the duvet and stay there. Perhaps permanently.

I don’t know about you, but my heart just aches.

These are desperate times. I’m not sure how we got here, how we arrived at this particular dark moment in history. But increasingly I’ve been thinking that, as the movie trailer I saw last week for an upcoming sci-fi flick put it, “There are places man was never meant to go.”

And yet, here we are.

The bioethical, moral, psychological, medical and theological issues conjured by Mrs. Schiavo’s slow death are flummoxingly complex. I’ve listened to and read myriad opinions from each of those disciplines and points of view. Many, on both sides of the fence, make sense.

But I couldn’t shake my gut response when I looked at the images of Mrs. Schiavo four years ago and again as they were rebroadcast thousands of times in the weeks leading up to her death.

She was alive.

And she should have been given the nourishment needed to keep living.

The way Mrs. Schiavo died diminishes us all as a people.

It was tragic, shameful and barbaric.

No sentient being should be starved to death, whether or not it is their wish to do so. And we don’t know with certainty that it was Mrs. Schiavo’s wish to die the way she did, or at all.

Surprising no one more than myself, I have to go with President Bush on this one: If there’s any doubt, fault on the side of life.

It’s the moral high ground across the board, whether we’re talking about a profoundly brain-damaged woman, a prisoner sitting on Death Row, a fetus that could be a viable baby outside the womb, a war that we can start but might not be able to end, or millions of people dying from poverty, disease and hopelessness under corrupt regimes in the Two-Thirds World.

We should always fault on the side of life.

We should never forsake mercy.

We should show love, not indifference.

We should.

Terri Schiavo’s death is the latest in a storm front of bad news that has descended on us in recent weeks, causing many of us to should all over ourselves.

The Lefkow murders.

The church massacre outside Milwaukee.

The school shooting in Red Lake, Minn.

Madmen. Unpredictable violence. Evil deeds. So much sorrow.

Many of us wonder if there may be spiritual answers to some of the questions these tragedies elicit. Those of us who do turn to faith, as well as science, to make sense of the world should not be derided for doing so.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the saga of Mrs. Schiavo’s final days in this life it’s that even the best science can fall short on providing definitive answers to complicated medical and moral questions.

Believing that science holds all the answers is as big a leap of faith as believing that God does.

Many religious leaders are calling Mrs. Schiavo’s death a “learning moment” for the nation. I agree. There are many lessons about the sanctity of life, about how theology and ethics have not kept pace with scientific progress, about the importance of having a living will, about how cruel families can be to each other, about why one woman’s struggle for life (or death) can touch so many hearts.

I said it was barbaric the way Mrs. Schiavo died, starved and dehydrated to death. And it was.

So how much more barbaric is it, then, that tens of thousands of men, women and children are dying of starvation in Africa, Asia and Latin America every single day?

Where is our outrage? Where is our round-the-clock coverage? Where are the pro-life activists? Where are the ethicists and doctors and theologians arguing around Larry King’s table the pros and cons of letting them starve to death?

Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world’s leading economists and author of a plan to eradicate extreme poverty worldwide by 2025, calls these deaths by poverty and starvation a “silent tsunami.”

But unlike the unpredictability of natural disasters, or the unique circumstances of Mrs. Schiavo’s long-anticipated death, their deaths are not unexpected. We know with scientific, statistical certainty why and where and how and how often the poor die.

When will we intervene in a major way and stop that barbarism?

When will we be merciful? When will we show them love and not indifference? When will we fault on the side of their lives?

Perhaps that’s where our hope lies.

As often happens when I’m feeling troubled, I’ve turned to music to soothe my mind and spirit. A few days ago, I dusted off “Big Horizon,” a decade-old album by singer-songwriter David Wilcox, and have had his song “Show the Way” set on repeat on my iTunes ever since.

It helps me. Maybe it’ll help you.

He says:

You say you see no hope

You say you see no reason we should dream

That the world would ever change

You’re saying love is foolish to believe

‘Cause there’ll always be some crazy with an army or a knife

To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life

Look, if someone wrote a play

Just to glorify what’s stronger than hate

Would they not arrange the stage

To look as if the hero came too late?