Vatican capers
Eluana Englaro has been in a coma for 17 years; a high court in Italy ruled last week that doctors could reduce her feeding and allow her to die.
Silvio Berlusconi, after consultation with the Vatican, has issued an emergency decree stating that food and water cannot be suspended for any patient depending upon them, reversing the earlier court ruling…Justifying his campaign to save Englaro’s life, the prime minister added that, physically at least, she was “in the condition to have babies”, a remark described by La Stampa newspaper as “shocking”.
Yes, it is. It is in fact one of the most repellent things I’ve heard in some time. It is (perhaps – I don’t actually know this) physically possible to cause babies to grow inside her and then to remove them after nine months – but so what? What difference does that make to anything? It’s already known that part of her body is still alive, but it’s also known that the part of her that makes her what a person is has been dead for 17 years – so what difference does it make that she could still be used as an incubator? There’s a combination of sexism and morbidity in that thought that makes the blood freeze.
The case has deeply divided Italian society and raised concerns over the influence of the Vatican. Yesterday Pope Benedict indirectly referred to Englaro in a message delivered to mark the World Day of the Sick, stating that society had a duty to defend “the absolute and supreme dignity of every human being” even when “weak and shrouded in the mystery of suffering”.
Oh the blindness of sanctimony. What dignity?! Where is the dignity in being kept around as an animated corpse? Where is the dignity in occupying a bed while having no mind? Where is the dignity in being a mindless brain-dead thoughtless dreamless hopeless lump of flesh? That’s not dignity. And defending that idea is not compassion – it’s a perverted backwards distorted idea of it which actually promotes suffering instead of preventing it.
Bastards.
You’d have thought the Italians would have learnt their lesson by now. How could they re-elect Berlusconi again?
It is fear of death. Under everything is fear of death.
“the mystery of suffering?”
It makes me want to scream considering the huge amount of suffering that outfit has caused. It’s not such a mystery after all. And no dignity or nobility about it.
These people are not bastards – a relatively innocuous affliction! These people are seriously fucked up! And, usually, catholics don’t talk about dignity; they talk about sanctity. And here, you see, the idea of the ‘mystery of suffering’ fits, because ‘sanctity’ doesn’t mean anything either!
The pope and the catholic church have lately shown themselves to be totally immoral (as well as politically clueless). Do you think people will notice the next time the pope makes some absolute pronouncement or other – that is, that absolutism leads to this kind of nonsense? Probably hoping for too much! But, honestly, isn’t it time that people started questioning why anyone quotes the pope? Berlusconi is clearly an idiot, but shouldn’t some of that rub off on the prisoner of the Vatican?
Yeah but I like saying Bastards when abusing people. Don’t deprive me of my little pleasures.
It is bastardry as you say.
Hard and heartbreaking cases are a bastard to deal with. Those with responsibility and love have spent the effort to support her over the years in hope of recovery, and gone through whatever the hell it is that gets you to a decision that its best to remove life support and got the legal authority to implement the decision that they have reached, probably another whole can of worms though that is not described. These political figures then pile on and use the case to polarise their own constituencies, essentially political profiteering.
Surely, no judge in the land could fail to issue a certificate of bastardy.
Dignity?
Dignity?
In what way is it respecting your dignity to be treated as if your uterus is the only part of you with value?
How revolting.
The ‘mystery of suffering’ (!) pales beside the mystery of the Vatican. As well as being tragic, this is truly grotesque.
Moreover, there is no mention of a husband in the original Guardian story, and a Google search does not reveal one either. The once beautiful woman (see Guardian photo) whose life has been mauled and effectively terminated through a car accident has no consciousness nor conscious mind. She will never regain consciousness nor ever be in a position to respond in a marriage ceremony.
So how, Mr Ratzinger, could she ever conceive with Church approval? What are they actually proposing as a possible course to be followed if Eluana Englaro is to become a mother? Are the luminaries of the Vatican seriously suggesting the unthinkable?
I genuinely don’t understand what good the Vatican think is being done by keeping her on life support, given that quite clearly she will never recover. What on earth could the point of that possibly be, even by their own standards? This is a serious query if anyone has any ideas.
The above assumes of course that “she could still have babies” was suggested to Berlusconi by the Vatican, and that he did not think it up all by himself.
This has been discussed at length over at PZ’s Pharyngula. One post caught my attention:
“Posted by: Ryan F Stello | February 8, 2009 11:12 AM
Time to change their motto:
‘Life begins with working ovaries’
It has a nice level of inanity to it.”
Perhaps you have already noticed that this almost scans to the tune of “Life is just a bowl of Cherries”
Of this, more later.
I don’t know why, Ian, they should not suggest the unthinkable – they’ve been doing it long enough. It’s bizarre. These idiots actually speak of a culture of death regarding assisted dying, yet they are quite prepared to keep a dead body in a kind of half life for a generation in order to uphold the sanctity of life and the mystery of suffering!
There’s got to be something psychologically wrong with these people. The unthinkable is already being done. The suggestion that Berlusconi is making is not the unthinkable. Unfortunately, as has been made clear here, it is all too thinkable! Belusconi has thought it!
Then again, Eric, they have set themselves up as spokesmen for God, for which activity they claim a monopoly franchise. That claim in turn gets them into all manner of contradictory situations. If a decision to terminate a life must be God’s (read theirs) alone, then everything else follows: everyone within reach of the long political tentacles of the Vatican faces the real possibility of a terminal phase and death one would not allow in the case of a dog or a snake.
It is not as if the infallible Church has never itself condemned people to death, and by the cruellest means possible.
If they had any integrity they would declare their whole enterprise a failure, bequest all their real estate for art museums, concert halls and such, flog off the remaining assets and distribute the proceeds to the poor, and then seek more wholesome careers as debt collectors, corporate lawyers, merchant bankers and used car salesmen.
You won’t find any argument from me, Ian. This organisation is a blight on the human landscape. Time to marginalise it as much as we can. My hope is that this series of really ‘off the wall’ decisions, like the acceptance of the Holocaust denying Bishop Williamson, the appointment of the auxillary bishop of Linz, and the death cult surrounding this unfortunate woman (Eluana Englaro), will help people to see what a really mad cap scheme Roman Catholicism really is.
Yeah, well – it hasn’t inspired Tony Blair to de-convert yet, has it. I don’t have much hope that any of this will change many people’s minds. The deal with the Catholic church has long been ‘we ignore 50/70/90% of what they say but we are Catholics nonetheless.’ A highly corrupt bargain, in my view, but people make it.
Alas, you are probably right, but I don’t need to take joy in it. So I hope, not despairingly, but unhopeful.
Well…I shouldn’t be too pessimistic. This kind of thing will turn some people off – and we don’t know how many, so we’re free to hope it will be lots, and even believe it will be.
None the less, OB, the decisions cited by Eric are all grist to the mill (or grist out, whichever you prefer.)
I have long maintained that beleving (100, 90, 80… percent) is a means to belonging, and not the other way around. A wider tribal identity in this life is as important to them as salvation in the next. The churches have declined as much from people finding other tribal identities, and ways thereby of shirking the burdensome parts, as from the influence of other ideas and critiques of Catholicism.
In my student days one of my aquaintances was a fellow who had bailed out of the priesthood on the eve of taking his final vows. He had since made up for lost time by leading the life of a total rake and libertine. When chided by former colleagues, he used to say “Don’t worry. On my deathbed I’m going to repent of the whole lot of it and receive absolution. Why not make a bet if there’s only one horse in the race?”