First, and worst, it causes me to oversteep my green tea. Five minutes yesterday, seven this morning. As the tea is a green masala that tends to make it somewhat bitter--color the mood for the entire day.
Second, it gives me a distinctly negative impression of some parts of the legal profession who defend everything by the letter of the law and not by the spirit of justice. Unquestioning obedience to precedent is no better than those who stood by and let Jews be carted off in trains during the reign of Nazi Germany. The law needs to be more greatly concerned about justice and less concerned about its own rules and regulations. Yes, I know to some extent they serve hand in hand, but I also know that when one person dies because of the refusal of the law to look at anything beyond their narrow rules, the law has failed us.
Third, it makes me think ill of the people who have brought this plague to us. I try hard to pray for Michael Schiavo. It become progressively more difficult. I cannot fathom why he doesn't use the same legal system to work out an iron-clad contract to remand Terri to the custody of her parents while retaining control of the money that remains from her own settlement. Surely if the law can sentence an innocent person to death, it can find a way to justify this much more minor crime as well.
Fourth, it saddens me and takes away some measure of the peace I seek in God. I don't know why it does as this does not influence me personally and I do not know the family. But somehow, this one issue has captivated me and I must push one calling attention to the travesty of justice that is acted out in executing a woman who had the temerity to fall ill--even persistently ill.
Fifth, I'm afraid it gives me ample opportunity to display my profound ignorance about any number of things (the law included). However, I suppose I'd rather be ignorant and morally right, than fully informed and morally wrong. (Although ideally, I could be fully informed and morally right--that isn't going to happen here because I don't care to come close enough to the law to be that informed. It strikes me that some aspects of the law likely have a contaminating effect on one's life and you must be made of sterner stuff than I am to resist this pull. Thus, my profound admiration for lawyers who follow St. Thomas More and can at once practice law as it is meant to be practiced and maintain a reasoned and reasonable Christian view of the world.)
That's it. I pray for Ms. Schiavo, for her husband, for the warped legal system that allows this travesty to continue, and for the people of the United States that they will wake up and see this for what it is--one more inroad upon the sanctity of Life disguising itself as a civil liberty. God have mercy on us all, undeserving though we are.
