Terri and the Pope

I have some people whom I have 'met' online that I consider to be friends, and some speak from lived experience about different issues. This is one that I asked if I could share on my blog. God bless you and your wife, Frank!


Originally published in THE MONITOR (Weekly Newspaper of the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey), Thursday, April 15, 2005, page 8.

Terri and the Pope

By F.X. Blisard


"Be not deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap (Gal 6:7).

Sooner or later, the engineers of the death of Terri Schiavo and their legions of supporters will learn the truth of these words. For the Lord certainly didn’t waste any time "responding" to the murder of Terri Schindler Schiavo, did He? The very next day, His own "good and faithful servant," Pope John Paul II, Apostle of the Gospel of Life, began his own "dying proces" a term I have grown to hate in the past month for the cavalier way in which it has been bandied about in the media.

But the psalmist says, “precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints” (Ps 116:15). The original Hebrew here for “saints” literally means “faithful ones” (hasidim), and the term translated “precious” (yaqar) literally means “expensive” or “costly.” This has always suggested to me that allowing one of His faithful friends to die is a kind of “investment” on His part: good steward that He is, He would not waste so precious a thing as the life of one of “His own” when He could just as easily cause it to serve a purpose. We have heard so much lately about the “purpose-driven life”…what of the “purpose-driven death”?

According to the ubiquitous “apostles of death,” the only purpose such deaths as Terri’s serves is to make their own lives easier—which is definitely not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about God’s purposes, which are always long-range, always strategic, and always transformational. The classic example is the reconciling utterance of Jacob’s beloved son, Joseph, to his traitorous brothers:

"As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today" (Gen 50:20). It is difficult, at this juncture, to see how God could bring anything good out of the heinous deed we all witnessed in Florida last month, but the death of our Holy Father so close upon the heels of our holy sister Terri’s is a clear sign from heaven if ever I saw one—a sign that He will be with us in the battle ahead. If that seems a confusing connection to you, let me walk you through it.

The manner of the Holy Father’s "dying process" was in such stark contrast to Terri’s that I don’t see how anyone can miss it. His was a public acting-out of the Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life) that he had so tirelessly proclaimed, while hers was a public martyrdom at the hands of the high priests of the "Culture of Death" which this Pope himself had both identified and indicted—most recently in response specifically to Terri’s own situation! Pope John Paul II was engaged in an all-out war with that Culture of Death, and that war will hardly cease with the close of his pontificate. If anything, it will likely intensify. Europe, with its dangerously low birth-rate and its embrace of euthanasia-as-policy, has already surrendered to the enemy. Our nation is the last bastion, but the walls were definitely breached in March of 2005. If you have not yet realized this, I pray this will serve as your wake-up call.

I get a real kick out of all the media pundits who are (as of this writing) having a hard time wrapping their minds around the world’s reaction to the week-long solemnities in St. Peter’s Basilica, especially their desperate hope that, maybe now, with the next pope, the Church will "finally"become more "relevant" and less "medieval." They are mistaking the all-too-evident timelessness of the Church for some (imagined) antiquated quality. As to their frantic speculations as to the future course of the Church… if you hit the mute button on your TV remote and listen for a minute, you just might hear that sound so eloquently described by the psalmist:

"He who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD has them in derision" (Psalm 2:4). After reading the balance of that psalm, I, for one, would not want to be on the receiving end of that laughter.