Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Schiavo -- The Real "Real Issue" -- Personhood, the Pope, and PVS
 a useful blog.
Posted by at

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Graham, my thought is that when a human being lacks a cerebrum or fore brain, which is the site of personality and "selfdom", then that human being should be allowed to die. There is no volition and no integration of sensory data received by the brain and there is no self. Children born with anencephaly are routinely allowed to die, anencephaly is a condition where a child is born with no brain or without portions of a normal brain. I am unqualified to comment on the possibility of a spirit being trapped inside a body that is not allowed to die but I wish this woman peace and I believe that will only happen with the death of her body.

I am sure this has not been my most lucid post but it is late here in WA. I am pleased to see you have a site, one more on my list of blogs to surf...S

2:26 PM, March 31, 2005
Anonymous said...

Graham, my thought is that when a human being lacks a cerebrum or fore brain, which is the site of personality and "selfdom", then that human being should be allowed to die. There is no volition and no integration of sensory data received by the brain and there is no self. Children born with anencephaly are routinely allowed to die, anencephaly is a condition where a child is born with no brain or without portions of a normal brain. I am unqualified to comment on the possibility of a spirit being trapped inside a body that is not allowed to die but I wish this woman peace and I believe that will only happen with the death of her body.

I am sure this has not been my most lucid post but it is late here in WA. I am pleased to see you have a site, one more on my list of blogs to surf...S

2:26 PM, March 31, 2005
Anonymous said...

Graham, my thought is that when a human being lacks a cerebrum or fore brain, which is the site of personality and "selfdom", then that human being should be allowed to die. There is no volition and no integration of sensory data received by the brain and there is no self. Children born with anencephaly are routinely allowed to die, anencephaly is a condition where a child is born with no brain or without portions of a normal brain. I am unqualified to comment on the possibility of a spirit being trapped inside a body that is not allowed to die but I wish this woman peace and I believe that will only happen with the death of her body.

I am sure this has not been my most lucid post but it is late here in WA. I am pleased to see you have a site, one more on my list of blogs to surf...S

2:27 PM, March 31, 2005
Anonymous said...

Graham, I am sorry for the threepeat... :-(

2:28 PM, March 31, 2005
graham said...

Hi Scott, thanks for that.

As a Roman Catholic, former nurse and regularly in contact with couples who have stillbirths or new borns with abnormalities I have a great appreciation for this entails.

There are no easy answers, each case is on its own merits, and the medical staff and families have a torturous time.

meanwhile the original post appears to be self re-producing - a sentient blog mebbe?

12:59 PM, April 02, 2005
graham said...

hmm, a post is self-replicating, my first experience of an intelligent blog! :)

1:15 PM, April 02, 2005
Anonymous said...

Just a quickie on theological considerations--I have no idea whether I am being an idiot by saying this or not, but I thought it might just be of interest what hit my brain when I skimmed over that pdf by John Paul II that is linked to in that blog entry.

No reply necessary, just intended as possible inspiration for you, on more sophisticated theological thinking than I am doing.

It reminded me of him on birth control and what bugged me about him in the past, I remember reading similar. He seems to have had some unusually specific ideas about what is natural in life and what is not? That is part of his specific type of theology? Here's the thing--one can definitely argue that certain types of feeding are not natural at all. For instance, a very close relative of mine was feed intravenously (not feeding tube, but just intravenous) for many months and it was not known if she could ever get sustenance any other way (it turned out for the better eventually) as very little of her intestinal system survived. Letting you know that because we are not really talking about quality of life here, they are plenty others in same situation that have quality of life. But it would certainly not be considered "natural". If you went by "natural" that person was meant to die! That is "medical", that is the the human creation of medicine, created by the human brain, helping a person survive that would not survive by "natural" means. Natural is in "Grapes of Wrath" where the girl feeds the old sick man with breast milk. That's natural. Having no intestines left, and getting intravenous, that's medical.

In the same way, I think his thinking was faulty on birth control. Seeing a difference between the rhythm method, using man's brain, and methods that combine man's brain and medicine, condom, pill etc., it's all the same.

His thinking on this really irritated me, because I know he was an intellectual. And I think it's bogus. But my opinion is neither there nor there, just thought you might be able to do something with the theorizing that got me there.

"arta"

9:20 PM, April 12, 2005
Anonymous said...

http://www.davidopderbeck.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/73

9:24 PM, April 12, 2005
Anonymous said...

re Birth Control, the fullest expression of sexual intercourse as taught by the Roman Catholic Church is when the couple are open to the transmission of life thru the conjugal act. NOW this and it is a big NOW is the ultimate, the highest good, most Catholics fall well short of this teaching, including moi,but the Holy Father is right in what he taught. In a perfect world condoms and the pill would not be needed.... G_72

11:42 AM, April 14, 2005

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)