Now that he’s spent a few days with Terri and her family, Fr. Rob blogs about his experience with Msgr. Malanowski and the Schindlers. It is much like our own, except that Fr. Rob does so with much more clarity and precision. While I have summarized his reflection below, Fr. Rob’s entire reflection on Terri’s personhood is worth reading. To begin, Father’s follow description of Monsignor Malanowski is totally accurate:
Msgr. Malanowski is very impressive. He is zealous, energetic, and courageous. His courage was demonstrated on Tuesday night: He went in to visit Terri and give her Viaticum. When the husband-mandated “minder” (family members and Msgr. Malanowski aren’t allowed to see Terri without one of Michael’s representatives present) realized what he was about to do, she cried foul and told Msgr. he couldn’t do that. He asked the police what would happen if he did it anyway. They replied that they would arrest him. His response was “so lock me up”, or something to that effect. But then they added that they would physically prevent him from giving Terri communion. It was only the certitude that he would fail that dissuaded him, not the prospect of being arrested. […] I know priests half his age (he’s 81) who don’t work half as hard as he does. […] On Wednesday, he hadn’t slept 4 hours in the last two days.
His following description of the Bob and Marie Schindler as good people is no less accurate:
One of the things that struck me very quickly is how level-headed, reasonable, and calm the Schindlers are. […] I was half-expecting to meet people rendered emotional wrecks by their week-long ordeal of watching their daughter dying. They’ve also been portrayed, by the husband and his attorneys, and by unsympathetic media, as everything from religious fanatics to pathetic simpletons.
But they weren’t, and aren’t. They’re very normal, solid people. They’ve been represented as people in denial of their daughter’s sad state, blinded by their emotional attachment to her. But that is simply not the case. They are quite realistic about Terri’s condition: she is severely brain damaged, and will almost certainly never come close to substantial recovery. But they see that the person they know and love as Terri is still there. And they cannot understand why the fact that she won’t recover amounts to grounds for ending her life.
Finally, Fr. Rob does away with the myth that Terri is a vegetable, and compares her situation to that of one with Down’s Syndrome before coming to the following conclusion: “People with Down’s Syndrome won’t ‘get better’. The best you can hope for is to teach them enough skills so they can function in society, and many Down’s patients will never even reach that point. But we don’t (yet) kill the mentally retarded because they won’t recover. Most of us still have sufficient vestigial humanity to recognize that killing of the retarded is inhuman and barbaric.”
Again, I strongly urge you to stop by Fr. Rob’s blog and read his reflection after spending a couple days at the prayer vigil.