The Spiritual State: Catching the Moon

We are forced to face extraordinary moral issues mostly because ordinary people make their lives or deaths inescapable. The civil-rights struggle was always visible; but after the Mississippi murders of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman in the summer of 1964, the struggle was inescapable. Violence against gay people was always visible, but after the death of Matthew Shepherd in October 1998 that violence was inescapable. The moral dilemma of surrogate parenting was made inescapable by the decision of Mary Beth Whitehead in February 1988 not to surrender the child she had been paid to conceive. And now, Terri Schiavo has made inescapable the always-present moral issues of euthanasia--and, in doing so, has wordlessly reminded us that all the big issues are moral and personal and spiritual and ultimately never legal or political.

The three facts all parties to the Schiavo case agree are true are that she is alive, she is innocent and she is mute. Everything else is in dispute. One group is arguing that rational individuals can decide to refuse medical treatment, even healing treatments, if they are unhappy about the quality of their life. Terri's husband is saying that Terri wanted this. The other side is arguing that she did not want this and that her parents are willing to care for her. I believe the issue is what we as a culture will do with living, innocent, mute people in our midst, and no court can rule on that.

In many right-to-die cases, the patient is on life-support systems, so all that needs to be done to allow them to die is to remove these medical obstacles to death. However, in this case Terri Schiavo is not on any life support systems. In this case, in order to live she only requires hydration and nutrition; and it is a big stretch for many people to label food and water extraordinary means. It is one thing to let a person die in peace who is already dying. It is one thing to remove an obstacle to death. It is quite another to cause death.

When you add in her parents' willingness to assume the financial and emotional burden of her care, the insistence of her husband that he be given the right to starve his wife to death just seems insanely ghoulish to many people who are otherwise in favor of a person's right to die. Death, they argue--and I agree--is not always an insult or a betrayal. Death can be a natural and welcome release from pain and suffering. We now face the frightening possibility of modern medicine, motivated more by a defensive fear of lawsuits than the Hippocratic oath of "first do no harm," stopping us from crossing over when it is our time. But this obviously is not Terri Schiavo's time. She is alive, innocent and mute. She is not at death's door. All this sound and fury is about cruelly bringing the door to her.

Many good people are justly fearful of government intrusion in private, personal and family decisions, but, like abortion, the question gets messy when you realize that there are two people with rights, not just one, and their interests are not always compatible. In the abortion debate, it is the right of the pregnant woman to reproductive freedom that does not stand alone but must stand against the right of the fetus to live. In this case, it is the right of the husband to make decisions for his severely brain-damaged wife versus the right of his wife to live. To expect the government to stay out of this is absurd. One way or the other, some court must decide whose interests are primary in these searing ethical conflicts. Either way, the government will and must intrude.

The argument that abortion is only about the rights of pregnant women or that euthanasia is only about the rights of Terri Schiavo's husband is both unbalanced and unfair. The rights of a person with severe brain damage or the rights of a fetus cannot be defined away. They are what give these dilemmas moral force and tragic urgency. It is this conflict of rights that is defining our culture now. And it has nothing to do with religious fanatics imposing their will, or narcissistic yuppies creating a culture of selfishness and death. It is about an entire culture struggling to know what is the right thing to do with the mute and innocent lives in our midst.

However the courts dispose of the legal issues in the Schiavo case, or in the various abortion cases, the moral issues will remain with us and between us. After the ruling they will be just as powerful and just as contentious as was slavery when it was the defining moral issue of our culture a century and a half ago. The courts have ruled both ways over the years, and their rulings settle the law for a time, but they never settle the moral issues. Their ruling in the Dred Scott case in the mid-19th century that slavery was legal did not make slavery moral. And for the pro-life community and for the pro-choice community, no ruling will end the moral debate that is defining us. Life is either a privilege or it is a gift we have not given and cannot revoke. No act of Congress or the courts can free us from facing that choice. And that choice, like the choice to forgo slavery, is not made in the great public places. That choice is made in the quiet and humble places where the better angels of our nature speak to the best parts of our loving hearts.

I visit many dying people, and one of them, David, always wanted me to tell him the Yiddish story of the foolish men of Chelm who one night saw the reflection of the moon in a rain barrel and decided that it would be a very valuable item for dark and stormy nights. So one clear moonlit night they sneaked up on the rain barrel, saw that the moon was in the barrel, and threw a cover over it. So pleased were they that they had caught the moon that they called the whole village together on a dark night to open the barrel and light the village. After opening it, they sadly discovered that the barrel was full of rain but no moonlight. After a lengthy consultation they concluded, "We were not quick enough to catch the moon." "Not quick enough to catch the moon," David said to me on my last visit to the hospice. That night he crossed over to a place where the answers to all questions are clear. To answer some questions, you need intelligence, cash, power and patience. But for other questions, you need an open heart and you need to be fast enough to catch the moon.