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The St. Petersburg Times‘ detailed report on Terri Schiavo’s final hours is elegant and rigorously balanced. The article, which appears under a five-person byline, is a moving account of the grief felt by Michael Schiavo and his brother, by Terri’s siblings and parents and by the protesters who have demonstrated outside the Pinellas Park hospice.
Scott Gold of the Los Angeles Times is the first mainstream reporter on the story about a new order of priests to be called Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. The order will devote the majority of its efforts to resisting abortion and euthanasia through political organizing.
On Palm Sunday I visited a mission congregation that’s largely on my theological wavelength. I would have felt entirely at home if sound theology alone made for rewarding worship.
It’s the sort of glurge one expects in the Inspirational category of sympathy cards at the chain grocery story: the human soul is in Heaven, watching our every movement with newly acquired supernatural powers. Except in this case the body is not dead yet:
The story of Ashley Smith’s heroism was bound to annoy some journalists as being too pat, too unbelievable, too much of a redemptive ending in a story of carnage and mayhem. Lee Siegel, television critic of The New Republic, raises some fair questions about whether Smith’s story should be accepted uncritically, although reporters will have a difficult time gaining access to her captor, Brian Nichols, for some time to come.
Both sides in the Terri Schiavo tragedy have found specialists to examine Terri (or her medical records) and testify on their findings. These specialists sometimes have a history of activism for or against euthanasia, and it’s fair enough to note their history.
Here’s a roundup of how various media outlets have handled a study on teenagers’ redefinitions of the words abstinence and virginity. It’s amazing how much of a worldview can be packed into a simple headline.
Daniel Schorr made an astonishing remark Monday on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered: “The [Terri Schiavo] case is a triumph of symbolism over substance. She has become the cause celebre of the right to life movement. There is no equally powerful right to death movement.” How is it, then, that Terri Schiavo is now in her fifth day of court-ordered starvation and dehydration?
If you oppose Terri Schiavo’s death by starvation and dehydration, you may be a fundamentalist — at least according to an opinion-laden report this morning by Megan O’Matz of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
