This is the largest part of how I read the Schivo case. Michael Schivo's lawyer may not be liable, but I've heard no lies.
Schiavo support founders under false witnessing
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
By Tony Norman
Whatever happened to that commandment about bearing false witness against one's neighbor? It may not be as sexy as the ones forbidding murder and adultery, but the last time I looked, it was still on the books. It's one of those pesky "jots and tittles" Jesus spoke of when he warned the religious leaders of his day that heaven and earth would pass away before any of the commandments did.
It makes you wonder if the folks manning the vigils for Terri Schiavo while simultaneously cursing Michael Schiavo as the second coming of Scott Peterson have any concept of how their calumnies and slander violate the integrity of their "pro-life" witness.
Given the righteous determination with which some have leapt over one commandment to honor another, there doesn't seem to be a lot of concern for embodying a Christ-like response to the agony of both families embroiled in this drama.
According to more than a few misguided surrogates of the Schindler family, Michael Schiavo wants his wife dead sooner rather than later because he's terrified that she'll wake from her vegetative state and accuse him of spousal abuse and battery. Never mind that law enforcement agencies have investigated these recurring rumors and found them specious.
Quack psychiatrists, dubious religious authorities, politicians and radio talk show hosts who have never met Mr. Schiavo insist he's Satan incarnate. Nothing else explains why a "loving husband" would starve an "angel" to death and single-handedly usher in a culture of death in America.
It's one thing when a desperate father insists that his brain-damaged daughter miraculously mouthed the words "I want to live" during a visit. Decency dictates that we politely look the other way in the face of such grief.
But when someone from the family's retinue of loose-talking "spiritual advisers" claims to have witnessed Terri practically reciting Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address during a visit, it is an outrageous lie. So why haven't the media and those with spiritual oversight over such people stepped in to call these liars to account? Talk show hosts may be beyond the pale of empirical truth, but clergy aren't. They must be held to a higher standard.
Ultimately, their well-meaning exaggerations are a false witness against Terri Schiavo and the many doctors and medical specialists who have charted her physical decline over 15 years. Truth shouldn't be the first casualty of this tragedy just because religious folks have strong feelings about it.
Meanwhile, the scenes outside of Schiavo's Pinellas Park hospice have taken on more than a whiff of mob rule, with clergy and protesters alike threatening to punish hard-core Republican politicians for failing to initiate a full-blown constitutional crisis for Terri's sake.
Even Terri's brother, Bobby Schindler, was rebuffed by the crowd on Easter Sunday when he implored them to go home and celebrate the holiest day of the Christian calendar with their own families.
Sadly, Terri Schiavo has become the primary religion for far too many angry and lost souls searching for meaning. "Saving" Terri from the machinations of a secular culture and "godless" judiciary has replaced a transcendent relationship with the God who sanctions truth in their hierarchy of values.
Even fellow Christians aren't exempt from "persecution in the name of love." Pinellas County Circuit Judge George Greer, a conservative Southern Baptist, was asked to leave his church because he sided with Mr. Schiavo and ruled that Terri's feeding tube could be removed. Now he faces death threats while his former congregation pats itself on the back for its righteousness. Unbelievable.
Those who insist that their faith gives them a license to bear false witness against Michael Schiavo have to answer a larger question: What does the perpetuation of slander have to do with Christian hope? And why do people who claim to believe in eternal life recoil in horror from the prospect that one of their own is about to enter into it? What kind of faith is this?
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