Posted on 03/28/2005 10:48:23 PM PST by nickcarraway
Former Massachusetts congressman Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest who supported legalizing abortion when he served in Congress, still uses the authority of his collar to cheerlead for evil causes. On Easter Sunday, he turned up at various television studios to praise the starvation to death of Terri Schiavo. Drinan was apparently Tim Russert's idea of a sturdy Catholic authority on this matter. Even as Drinan praised the killing of a disabled woman he mused nostalgically about passage of the "Americans with Disabilities Act," a glorious piece of legislation, he said. A host not willing to play the stooge to a snow-job artist might have asked Drinan: So why doesn't the ADA prevent murdering a disabled woman like Terri Schiavo? Why does the ADA give the disabled ramps at restaurants but permit trapdoors at hospitals?
Warming to the old Democratic creed, Drinan also spoke of the need for gun control. "Why don't we ban guns?" he said at one point. This from a proponent of legalized violence at the beginning and end of life. If Michael Schiavo took out one of the guns that Drinan wants banned and shot his wife to death, how would that be morally different from the methods of starvation and dehydration?
The media's instinctual use of "authorities" who are frauds -- the Drinans who clog their rolodexes (priests appear on television in proportion to their willingness to upend Catholic teachings) -- was just the tip of the iceberg during a weekend of torrential bias. Whenever a cultural controversy pops up, the bias that mainstream reporters furiously deny comes rushing back. Reporters and commentators were thrilled with the chance to try and nail Republicans for "overreach." To embarrass the Republicans and ensure that everyone would feel good about killing Schiavo, the media dug down into their bag of malicious tricks, using tendentious polling, a smear job against Tom DeLay, reports of faux-concern about conservative division (worrying about a cohesive Republican Party is of course foremost in their minds), and flat-out Orwellian propaganda to confuse the matter as much as possible.
The reliance on euphemism was almost nonstop. Much of the coverage was cast in the passive terms of not "prolonging" a life rather than starving a woman to death. The journalists rooting for her death didn't quite have the courage of their convictions. They didn't want to call murder by its proper name, so they searched out softer names for it. Lest anyone figure out that the humanism of liberalism is essentially Hitlerite -- think about how often killing people deemed undesirables is the final solution in liberal schemes of human improvement -- specificity had to be avoided at all costs.
Just as reporters are more comfortable calling soon-to-be-killed human fetuses "blastocysts," so they prefer calling a disabled human like Schiavo a "vegetable." Reporters helped launch the abortion movement with euphemisms denying the humanity of children, now they help the euthanasia movement pick up speed with euphemisms denying the humanity of the disabled and the elderly.
"Consent" was perhaps the liberal media's favorite big lie over the weekend. This won't lead to killing the disabled and elderly unless they consent, went the lie. Anybody who believes this should count up the number of unborn children who have been aborted without their consent. Those saying, "This is what Terri wanted," are obviously saying, "This is what we want for her." Juan Williams on Fox, hot under the collar after panelists questioned his essential let's-kill-the-disabled position, fell back on the consent sophistry: I don't recall him ever worrying about the lack of consent in the million-plus abortions each year. It is a little late in the game for liberals to say that they are opposed to killing without consent
On PBS Bonnie Erbe, who is one liberal willing to be openly crass, bluntly asked her panelists why people with a low "quality of life" should continue to drain public health resources. Erbe's question will become commonplace. Under liberalism in America "the right to die" will rapidly become a duty to die: for the sake of liberal utopia, the disabled and elderly will be pressured into becoming accomplices to their own murders. Let the disabled bury the disabled. Life is for the living. That's the spirit of liberalism at this point.
Euthanasia has never been about ending the burdens of the ill but about ending the burdens of the living who don't want to care for the ill. It is not about "letting die" -- the media's dishonest description of what's happening to Schiavo -- but about killing someone who isn't dying but people wish would die.
The infantile gotcha journalism against Tom DeLay in the Los Angeles Times -- apparently editor John Carroll's rebuking memo to reporters about their penchant for biased coverage on social issues has been gathering some dust -- was designed to sow confusion on this point. Tom DeLay's father was in the act of dying after a freak accident, and the DeLay family let him die. The Times compares this to starving a woman to death. If Terri Schiavo were in the act of dying, she would have died. It is precisely because she wasn't in the act of dying that her husband resorted to having her killed by starvation.
The Times' casuistry is as despicable as Robert Drinan's.
Nick:
Drinan was and is a fool. The only one that matches him is Andrew Greeley.
Any one who has serious health problems or disablities (myself included here) had better be very worried about the Drinans of the world. Drinan and his ilk have forgotten what a priest is--they are too busy doing the lecture circut to reflect on the meaning of the collar they wear.
They, like Judas, have traded it for a few pieces of silver. However, far from paying the bill ike even Judas did,, those who are in extremis (like Terri) are the ones that pay the piper.
When I was in Montana, Drinan came up in a conversation with A Jesuit I dopke with at Saint Ignatius Mission. This Jesuit was the old style---a real gutsy fellow.
In short, he actually HATED Drinan. Moreover, he said he deserved Excommunication for his views and votes.
It was refreshing to hear.
It's interesting to me that liberals are parading the DeLay situation as if there's any link to Terri of any kind.
The difference between letting a parent who's dying, die and parents having to watch a child starved to death against their wishes is - in human terms - truly incalculable.
Let the old fool speak (and remove all doubt that he is indeed, a fool). He is an albatross to the Left; a Last Century sophist without conscience. He tends no flock but like-minded fools.
As a BC grad, I've always been disgusted by Drinan.
Accepting an award from the ABA, he said: "the purpose of law is to protect the powerless from the powerful." Apparently the powerless does not include the disabled.
Trivia: Who dropped out of the Massachusetts Congressional race back in the early 70's to let Drinan run? (Answer: His initials are JFK.)
ping
ping
Even if DeLay had done something wrong to his father, it still wouldn't be an excuse to do something wrong to terri.
Actually, I think Fr. Drinan may be worse. Fr. Greeley was ordained just a year after Fr. Drinan, although, since he was a Jesuit, he had a much longer education. Despite that, Greeley usually come off as smarter, even if he chooses to ignore it.
BUMP!
As always, thanks for the ping.
George is the best columnist going these days and this is another masterpiece.
I think this column deserves a few bumps.
Yeah, Jesuits usually take 11 or 12 years become finally ordained (including 2 as a novitiate, I think) Jesuits were usually pretty well-educated as you have said
The diocesians are about 27 or so (a year or two either way)
In any event, both D and G are dangerous.
1970 : (MASSACHUSETTS : JOHN KERRY RUNS FOR CONGRESS; ABORTS RUN AFTER A MONTH) For Kerry, politicizing the nation's war effort for partisan purposes was the right thing to do, in contrast to the violent revolutionary designs of colleagues who were out to destroy the system. Kerry didn't want to take down the establishment. He wanted to take it over. His aborted, monthlong 1970 congressional campaign was a victory for him politically, as it landed him on television's popular Dick Cavett Show, where he came to the attention of some of the central organizers of the antiwar/pro-Hanoi group known as Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW).
VVAW was a numerically small part of the protest movement, but it was extremely influential through skillful political theater, the novelty of uniformed combat veterans joining the Vietniks, and a ruthless coalition-building strategy that forged partnerships with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), its Trotskyite rival, the Socialist Workers Party, and a broad front that ranged from pacifists to supporters of the Black Panthers and other domestic terrorist groups.--- "Kerry Exploits Vets for Hanoi," By J. Michael Waller, www.insightmag.com
MARCH 1970 : (MASSACHUSETTS : KERRY DROPS OUT OF CONGRESSIONAL RACE TO MAKE ROOM FOR 'FATHER' ROBERT F. DRINAN; KERRY BECOMES CHAIRMAN OF THE ANTIWAR PRIESTS' POLITICAL CAMPAIGN) Kerry drops out of the Fourth District congressional race to make way for antiwar activist Father Robert F. Drinan, dean of Boston College Law School, and later becomes chairman of Drinan's campaign. Drinan defeats pro-war incumbent Philip Philbin in the Democratic primary and goes on to win the general election. ------ From WinterSoldier Timeline , http://ice.he.net/~freepnet/kerry/index.php?topic=Timeline
Drinan/Kerry ping
Maybe it's encouraging that they had to dredge up Drinan -- on the Sunday Talk Show thread, the common response was "I thought he was dead!"
REV. ROBERT DRINAN: No, I don't. I think it's rather well settled at the state level, and it's rather well settled also in Catholic theology. I would recommend that the viewers look at the Web site of the Catholic Hospital Association. For years, they have been developing a coherent philosophy on this matter and the Holy See in the last year seem to have been a bit more conservative, which is understandable. It's a terrible, terrible, agonizing thing. But I think that all the judges that heard it, 20, 25 judges, we have the most certainty that we can have in this difficult situation.
If only they also believed that the "agony" of abortion (or gun control, or CC laws) was also a state's rights issue. That would be an enormous victory for our side. But they're leftists, so they pick and choose what arguments to make on what issues, regardless of their inherent inconsistency.
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