.- The Catholic Media Coalition has declared Nov. 30, 2003 Theresa Schindler Schiavo Day and has sought support from the U.S. bishops in this effort.
The day is aimed at bringing attention to the plight of the severely disabled Florida woman whose estranged husband continues to seek her death by starvation through the courts.
Schiavo “has become a unifying symbol for the disabled, the abandoned, and those persons for whom society has no use,” said Catholic Media Coalition President Mary Ann Kreitzer.
The 39 year-old woman, “rendered cognitively disabled from an undetermined cause, embodies the characteristics of persons whose lives appear to lack quality, whom a pagan society would willingly eliminate through court-ordered euthanasia," she said.
Kreitzer says the Schiavo case is purposefully being used to further the cause of physician-assisted suicide and to bring euthanasia “within the legal boundaries of the Constitution under the same ruse of privacy rights that are employed to kill the pre-born.”
In a letter to the U.S. bishops, Kreitzer urges them to proclaim strongly and publicly the Church's teaching regarding euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. The bishops must also teach about the moral requirements of care for sick, terminally ill and disabled individuals, she said.
"Catholics need to know that food and water, no matter in what form they are delivered, are the God-given right of all persons,” she said. “The removal of nutrition/hydration with the subsequent intent to cause death … is strictly forbidden by Catholic moral teaching."
