Terri Schiavo, the Pope, and the "Culture of Life"

I don't generally read the dogmatically secularist New York Times, but today Brother Dominic Langevin, O.P., sent me a link to a very interesting story on the impact of the Schiavo case on American culture. In this piece, the Times focuses its attention on how politics, religion, law, and medicine (not to mention the media) all intersected in the Schiavo case to create a microcosm of the larger "culture wars":

The life and death of Terri Schiavo - intensely public, highly polarizing and played out around the clock on the Internet and television- has become a touchstone in American culture. Rarely have the forces of politics, religion and medicine collided so spectacularly, and with such potential for lasting effect.

Ms. Schiavo, the profoundly incapacitated woman whose family split over whether she would have preferred to live or die, forced Americans into a national conversation about the end of life. Her case raised questions about the role of government in private family decisions.

But her legacy may be that she brought an intense dimension - the issue of death and dying - to the battle over what President Bush calls "the culture of life."

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Here's Brother Dominic's take on the Times story:

"All kinds of people are talking about the culture of life vs. the culture of death, spouting off that these are new terms (and the article even links the phrase "the culture of life" as originating with President Bush), without recognizing the fact that the Pope spoke about this 15 or so years ago in Evangelium Vitae."

It does seem ironic that, as we appear today to be approaching the end of the Holy Father's life, the major media are just now catching on to the "culture of life" vs. the "culture of death" language that the Pope first invoked over a decade ago. And the Pope's not even getting the credit for it. I admire President Bush a great deal, but "culture of life" is not his invention, and he shouldn't be the one receiving credit for it.

Similarly, the clueless-about-religion liberal media commentators have spent the last 2 days talking about how "complicated" a Church leader the Pope has been because he could be so "liberal" on issues like war, the death penalty, and human rights, but so "conservative" on issues like sex, birth control, and abortion. Last night on CNN, Aaron Brown asked Bill Donohue of the Catholic League about this apparent contradiction (Brown even referred to the Pope as a "traditionalist" on cultural and moral issues, which I'm sure caused any trads who may have been watching to spew whatever they were drinking through their nostrils).

Donohue replied along the lines that there is no inconsistency at all in the Pope's teachings on these issues once you realize that his Papacy has been one that values the life of each individual as a unique child of God. The entire pontificate of Pope John Paul II has been one in pursuit of creating a "culture of life."

But when we see the outcome of the Terri Schiavo case - that a defenseless child of God, at the mercy of those who should be taking care of her, can be dehydrated and starved to death - we are confronted with just how far we have to go to achieve the Holy Father's objective.

And now, it seems, we are approaching the end of the Pope's life here on earth. When the Pope does pass on to his Eternal Reward, I pray that the next Pope, along with the Church's leaders and laity, will take up the Holy Father's mantle with respect to the creation of a "culture of life", and that we will redouble our efforts to bring into fruition a society that values life from conception until natural death.