Related articles and links |  1 of 5

Schiavo autopsy released
The Piniellas-Pasco Medical Examiner released Terri Schiavo's autopsy report today. The full version is here. Highlights:

• What caused her collapse 15 years ago is still a mystery. There's no evidence of an eating disorder or of a heart attack.
• No evidence of trauma, abuse, or harmful substances were discovered.
• Schiavo died from dehydration, not starvation.
• She would not have been able to ingest food or water after the tube was removed.
• Schiavo's brain weight "was approximately half of the expected weight."
• Schiavo was blind at the time of her death.

This last point is of particular interest, notes the Associated Press, since it "countered a videotape released by the Schindlers of Terri Schiavo in her hospice bed. The video showed Schiavo appearing to turn toward her mother's voice and smile, moaning and laughing. Her head moved up and down and she seemed to follow the progress of a brightly colored Mickey Mouse balloon."

Early response from those who opposed removal of the feeding tube suggests that the autopsy won't change many minds.

"There is no medical condition or disability that should ever be championed as a justifiable reason to deny water to a human being," CWA senior policy director Wendy Wright says in a press release.

Priest for Life's Frank Pavone agrees. "No details of this autopsy change the moral evaluation of what happened to Terri. Her physical injuries and disabilities never made her less of a person. No amount of brain injury ever justifies denying a person proper humane care. That includes food and water."

United Church of Christ proposal to declare Jesus as Lord will probably fail
What's the basic belief that would separate a Christian denomination from a non-Christian religion? Declaring Jesus Christ as Lord? Believing that Jesus was divine?

Turns out that the United Church of Christ will be voting on a resolution affirming such statements at the denomination's upcoming convention—and NorthJersey.com (the website of the The Record and Herald News newspapers) reports that it's likely to fail.

"Religiously speaking, it sounds like apple pie," First Congregational Church of Park Ridge pastor Ray Kostulias said. "But there is a judgmental quality to it that implies very strongly that those who do not agree with us are condemned or damned or hopeless - and that's exactly the thing that UCC is against."

Sherry Taylor, Associate Conference Minister for the New Jersey Association of UCC's Central Atlantic Conference, agrees. "If you join the UCC, you are not given a list of things and asked, 'Do you believe in this?' " she said."There are no tests of faith."

But that doesn't mean that there should be no faith, says Albert W. Kovacs of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Woodbridge, New Jersey. "The whole point of this is that many of these people have a very fuzzy idea of faith in God," he said. We have significant numbers of clergy who don't believe in God."

The UCC's General Synod meets July 1-5 in Atlanta. It will be interesting to compare the outcome of this resolution against other resolutions proposing divestment from Israel, "saving Social Security from privatization," support of same-sex marriage, and other issues.

More articles

Politics:

• Christian right's alliances bend political spectrum | Conservative Christians have forged coalitions with — or sometimes simply pulled in the same direction as — activists who more often are their adversaries (USA Today)
• Houston minister could help decide next governor | Reverend Laurence White is pastor at a Lutheran Church in northwest Houston and head of an organization called the Texas Restoration Project (KHOU, Houston, Tex.)

next page... |  1 of 5

June (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49