Father Pavone on Terri Schiavo

PAVONE: Certainly amazingly-time “reflexes.” I’ll give the doctors the benefit of their own expertise. But this raises, of course, the deeper moral issue. Give them what they are saying. What does that mean? That someone at a lower level of functioning can just be starved to death?

That, of course, is the bigger question here. This is not just a death. This is a killing.

And we have to ask ourselves, has our nation now begun to go down the road of killing those who are disabled, simply because somebody says that they want to be killed?

Terri didn’t die today from anything except the fact that her food and water were withheld for the last two weeks. She had no other underlying illness whatsoever. This is a case of throwing away a disabled person.

Q: Father, do we know what happened to the Schindlers, Terri’s parents, during these final moments?

PAVONE: Yes. We were in communication with them this morning by phone, and they were then on their way over here, actually, when we heard the news of Terri’s passing, and then all of us were together inside the hospice just moments after that announcement. They went in to Terri, of course, to embrace her body. I stood at the door and offered the prayers of the church, for those who are just deceased, and of course we sat and just consoled on another, and now they are grieving privately at home. They are going to have a statement a little later.

So, in that sense, yes. There were elements here that led to the conflict. However, the solution is broader than that. We do have, here, a classic case of the question of throwing away disabled people. This woman was killed. She didn’t die of a terminal illness. She was killed, and it is a matter, therefore, of conscience, right now, for us all to ask: “Is this what we are going to continue to do with brain-injured people?” Because, whether they have expressed their wishes or not, obviously it can result in their death, as has happened today.

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