This Easter, the Passion of Terri Schiavo

"This year it would seem we are to approach Eastertide through the passion play of Terri Schiavo. Now the new culture of technology and disposability vs. the old culture of loyalty and love is put on upon our video stage for what may only be a two-week run before death brings down the curtain. The ultimate end of the play -- two weeks or twenty years -- is not in doubt. No matter. Its resolution it is already that of a vast cultural tragedy. Performed by the Shiavos, the courts, the media, the congress, it was written by all of us day by day over several generations that only wanted one thing -- more. Seen for what it is, it sickens all of us as it should. It is only proper that we now be forced to watch what we have made. . .

This previously private but now national drama reminds us -- as things magnified by our relentless media often do -- that one of the crucial questions of our blighted age is whether or not we are correct in regarding human life as something which is, under the proper conditions and self-ascribed definitions, something that really is "disposable" whenever it becomes inconvenient? And in our answer to this, whatever it may be, we shall learn very little about Terri Schiavo but a great deal about ourselves." American Digest