Cardinal Caffara - Fate of Eluana Englaro Signals Fate of the West
Eluana's Fate Signals the Life or Death of the West
Cardinal Caffara on a Humanity Adrift Without God
Cardinal Caffara on a Humanity Adrift Without God
BOLOGNA, Italy, FEB. 1, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The fate of a young woman in a coma whose father has appealed for her feeding tube to be removed has become a "sign of contradiction" that signals the fate of the West, according to the archbishop of Bologna.
Cardinal Carlo Caffara explained this today in his homily given at the cathedral in Bologna for the 31st National Day for Life in Italy. He spoke specifically of the case of Eluana Englaro, 37, who has been in a coma since 1992, when she suffered a car accident.
Her case has been called Italy's version of the Terri Schiavo battle that raged in the United States in 2005, and ended in Schiavo's death by dehydration and starvation.
The cardinal said that Eulana has become a "'sign of contradiction' between a culture of death and a culture of life."
"Her martyred body," he explained, "has become the question addressed to every conscience that reflects on man's destiny: To whom does man belong? Who has dominion over man's life and death? Who owns man?"
According to Cardinal Caffara, "the spiritual event of the West has come to the end of the line: If the life of man does not belong to man but to God, no one has control over it for any reason, [but] if the life of man belongs to man, it is consistent to hypothesize circumstances in which everyone can do what he wants with his life or ask others to put an end to it."
He said "the illusion of building a human home 'as if God did not exist' must at some moment bring us to this point." And the cardinal added: "In the body of this woman, and in her fate, there is an image of the fate of the West."
Cardinal Caffara invited the faithful to pray that the Lord "give wisdom to our legislators, so that they know how to defend the good of the person, of every person, by means of just norms."
To the human and civil community the archbishop of Bologna said, quoting St. Irenaeus, that "God's nearness to man that the Church grants us makes us once again repeat with great conviction: 'the glory of God is man fully alive, but man's life is the vision of God.'"
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Meanwhile, Eleana Englaro's fate is still uncertain. The good news, Managing Director Claudio Ricocbon of the Friulian care home in Undine said in a statement that his previous offer to allow the sentence to be carried out in his clinic must be withdrawn. He cited several concerns including the fact that doing so could create unacceptable financial risk for the care home.
The bad, Piemonte governor Mercedes Bresso invited her family to send her there & he would insure there would be no impediment to their plans to kill her by dehydration in accordance with a decision by the Italian high court.
& while the husband, Beppino Englaro, has ingnored that invite, Tuesday (3 February 2009) he had her transfered to La Quiete, a private clinic in the north eastern town of Udine. Eluena was taken by ambulance from the clinic in her home town of Lecco at about 1:30 am. Beppino Englaro, who has been petitioning the courts for over a decade to euthanize his daughter, said her transfer to the new facility is “the first step... towards the liberation of my daughter. It seems we have finally succeeded.”
This is what will happen in what he calls the liberation of his daughter: "In cases of severe dehydration, toxins build up in the body and the body's chemical balances are disrupted. This disrupts the electrical system that triggers the action of muscles, including the heart. The tongue and lips crack and bleed. The eyes recede into their orbits. The skin becomes so sensitive it peels off upon firm contact. The lining of the nose can crack and bleed. Dried brain cells can cause convulsions. The mouth becomes dry and saliva thick, and there is cracking of the mucous membranes of the mouth and lips. The blood thickens, increasing the risk of stroke. As fluid decreases in the body, blood pressure drops and the heart rate increases, possibly causing shock and heart attack."
Liberation via a death by 1 of the most horrible ways of dying there is. This is a father that claims he loves his daughter? He is more in line with those in the Nazi death camps who used this as a form of torture.
On Thursday, the Italiano Government took steps to prevent this from happenning. It announced that it has made ready a draft emergency measure that would prohibit the removal of food and hydration from vulnerable patients. As of the posting of this the measure, though drafted and ready, has not yet been formally adopted. The final decision to do so is that of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
The measure, is "decree law" entitled "Urgent Provisions on Nutrition and Hydration." The measure says, "Pending the approval of a complete and comprehensive legislative framework in the field of end-of-life, nutrition and hydration, as forms of life support physiologically designed to alleviate suffering, cannot under any circumstances be rejected by the person concerned or suspended from caregiver subjects unable to provide for themselves".
In Italia, a decree law can be put into place by the head of state in urgent circumstances, for a period of 60 days while Parliament considers it for permanent approval. Pier Ferdinando Casini, a member of the Chamber of Deputies and a member of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats, said, "We respect the grief of the family of Eluana and we are close to her father, but we believe that nobody has the right to life and death on a person."
Also, the public prosecutor of the town of Udine, Antonio Biancardi, has announced that his office will undertake an investigation to verify the testimonies of friends and family who claimed that Eluana Englaro would have preferred to die by dehydration than be allowed to live in a "persistent vegetative state". (The more I hear the term vegetative, the more I hate it. She is not a vegetable, she is a human being.) I suspect this is more for appearances sake than anything.
Pray that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi approves the measure & that the Italiano Parliament follows suite. That this could even happen in the land of my ancestors, the heart of Christianity, is beyond anything I could ever have imagined. But then I could say the same thing about what happenned to Terri Schiavo 4 years ago.
The West is heading towards the brink. Will the West heed the Cardinal's prophetic warning? I hope & pray we will, but fear we won't. If we don't, then we will soon be reaping the whirlwind for the evil we have sown.
posted by Al @ 4:59 AM
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