Jesuit: Let her die.
Some brown nuggets:
[On the Pope's assertion that food and water are not extraordinary means of sustaining life:]
What you’re quoting is a statement that was issued by the pope at a meeting of [an] international association of doctors last year in Rome. This was really a meeting of very right-to-life-oriented physicians. It was an occasion speech. The pope meets 150 groups a week—a group comes in and the pope gives a speech. If the pope tells the Italian Bicycle Riders Association that bicycle riding is the greatest sport that we have, that doesn’t mean that’s the church’s teaching, that the skiers and tennis players and golfers are out. It wasn’t a doctrinal speech.
On recent comments by Monsignor Sgreccia:
The people in the Vatican are the same as the people in the United States: they run the gamut. He represents the radical right-to-life segment of thinking. But he’s not the only voice in the Catholic Church. He undoubtedly wrote that speech the pope gave. And now he says, “See? The pope said it!”
and
...this is not a fight about a feeding tube in a woman in Florida. This is a fight about the political power of the Christian right. The argument from Bishop Sgreccia is like saying, “Tom Delay just said, ‘In America we never stop feeding tubes'.” That doesn’t make it true.
On political efforts to save Terri:
The Republican riposte to this is astonishing: interest in states’ rights disappearing, interest in privacy of the individual to be free of government intrusion disappearing. If we implemented the policy articulated by the Congress and the president, we’d have everyone going forever!
Yeah, the Pope's just another guy with an opinion.
Funny how the remarks you quote are so familiar, yet they never fail to depress.
It's particularly unnerving that people like this guy deliberately play on the general public's ignorance of and disinterest in the Church's actual positions and teachings.