Recent posts

#1

General Catholic Discussion / Re: Fr Shannon Collins suspend...

Last post by Michael Wilson - Today at 05:05:43 PM

Heinrich,
what is happening with the priests, chapel and parish since the shutdown?

#2

General Catholic Discussion / Re: Former SSPX US District Su...

Last post by Michael Wilson - Today at 05:03:16 PM

A.C.
To this day I still can't see it; I've "replayed the tape" a couple of times, and just shake my head in disbelief. He stayed with our family a couple of times when he was a seminarian; and he visited our home when we lived in Spain when he was stationed there. He must have come from a wealthy family, as his manners, bearing and all around persona, were of a very well educated person.
The only "blip" on the radar was the articles that he would write in their district magazine; a lot of "fluff" and "blah, blah, blah" but no substance. It was as if he was showing off his culture, but never getting to the point.

[not]

#3

The Sedevacantist Thesis / Re: Sedevacantists and Akita

Last post by awkward customer - Today at 05:02:08 PM

It's worth emphasising that Terry Schiavo could not take food or liquid by mouth.  That's why she needed a feeding tube inserted into her stomach.

The issue surely hinges on whether feeding tubes inserted into the stomach constitute 'Ordinary' or 'Extraordinary' treatment especially when there is no hope of recovery and being fed like this will be the permanent, long term state of the patient.  John Paul II said they do.  But what did the pre-Conciliar Popes say?

Interestingly, when the Catholic Princess Grace of Monaco suffered a haemorrhagic stroke while driving in 1981, then lost control of her car, went over the edge of a cliff and suffered another stroke, the Catholic doctors at the Catholic hospital advised her Catholic husband Prince Ranier that she would never recover.  And so Prince Ranier made the decision to switch off her life support machine.

Was he wrong?

#4

General News and Discussion / Re: Economic Myths on High Pri...

Last post by Michael Wilson - Today at 04:56:09 PM

I would agree with the above except for the "shut down all immigration"; the U.S. Population is not reproducing at a high enough rate to sustain economic growth; unless someone can convert our country to Catholicism (real Catholicism; not the Conciliar type); we need immigration. What has to be stopped is illegal immigration, which allows countries such as Cuba in the 80's and Venezuela currently, to get rid of all of its prison population and dump them on us.

#5

General News and Discussion / Economic Myths on High Prices

Last post by james03 - Today at 03:32:17 PM

There are three myths in economics that need to be corrected:

1.  High Mortgage Rates
2.  High Health Insurance prices
3.  High College Tuition costs.

Mortgage rates are somewhat normal, maybe they could drop 0.5%, but they aren't outrageous.  The real truth is High Home Costs.  Think about it, the invention of the nail gun should have DROPPED prices.

On health insurance, first off it is illegal in the US.  You can only buy health PLANS which are full of government stipulations.  Single men have to pay for pregnancy, for example.  Getting straight insurance, like going to the hospital, is impossible.  So having a health plan vs. insurance does result in some of the high price.  The real problem is high MEDICAL costs.  50 years ago a doctor came to your house in what was termed a house call.  He drove a Buick and lived in a better part of town.  You paid him cash.  Today he drives a Porsche, lives in a mansion, and has a vacation condo in Aspen.

College tuition is reasonable when you consider you have to fund massive admin bloat and sky high professor salaries.  Mostly this was due to government loan programs (currently around $1.5 TRILLION, with the majority being women) and various woke policies.

To fix these problems:

1.  Stop foreign buying of housing and deregulate the industry.  Shut down all immigration.  As the boomers die, home prices will come back down.  Normalized mortgage rates would normally get the prices down, but importing 10 MM foreigners just with illegal immigration counters that.

2.  Deregulate the medical industry.  Allow people to buy health insurance.  Create a new profession called "medic", which can be filled by military medics who have retired.  Allow them to write prescriptions.  Cap immaterial damages in lawsuits and eliminate criminal "punitive" damages and "triple" damages, which are criminal fines without a criminal defense, and have no right to be in a civil trial to settle a dispute.

3.  Get rid of government loans for tuition.  Eliminate bull crap requirements for colleges especially ones forced on colleges for accreditation. 

#6

Traditional Catholic Discussion / Re: Insightful sermon on "Divi...

Last post by james03 - Today at 03:16:36 PM

Sweet Meteor of Death.  I discovered it when I was looking for some funny pictures of The Great Comet of Chastisement^(TM).

Seems like one of those crazes people have fun with like the Zombie Apocalypse, which was popular a few years ago.  Adherents predict a hidden meteor is going to strike the Earth.

#7

General Catholic Discussion / Re: Fr Shannon Collins suspend...

Last post by Heinrich - Today at 03:14:56 PM

Father Shannon blessed my home. These are my priests and my community. We have been unjustly and cruelly treated. Been there for almost five years. Laus, the priests are suspensed for not concelebrating, criticising the NO, etc. Families literally went to Wisconsin to have their children receive Confirmation at ICKSP since the bishop refused(couldn't) use old Rite. And I am sick and tired of grown men taking to an almost Gospel level Tolkien/LOTR. Saddens and angers me that people would take a three year old opinion and capitalize on a carnal whim to take a shot.

[But common sense tells me that the method you used to arrive at your opinion -- reviewing CT images, watching a video and reviewing summary/excerpts regarding testimony given in deposition transcripts -- is no substitute for examining a live patient.]

#8

The Sedevacantist Thesis / Re: Sedevacantists and Akita

Last post by awkward customer - Today at 02:39:24 PM

I like to remind myself that, the same clergy that are the biggest asserters that the 1968 NREC is "invalid" and the 1968 NRPO is "doubtful" also promulgated the idea that Michael Schiavo had a "God given right" to murder Terri Schiavo (Cekada) ....

What?

Forcing a feeding tube into the stomach of someone with lifelong Bulimia whose body has been destroyed by the ravages of that condition, who is effectively brain dead and who is being forced to breathe by a machine, could easily count as cruel and unusual punishment in some quarters.

At any rate, such treatment, given involuntarily, goes way beyond what the Church has traditionally described as 'Extaordinary' treatment, which we are entitled to refuse.

Fr Cekada was one of the few, sane commentators who pointed this out, thank goodness.

Michael Schiavo did not simply decide to remove the feeding tube, but all food and water, even from the mouth.

The SSPV thoroughly refuted Cekada's argument.

https://www.wcbohio.com/articles/the-execution-of-terri-schiavo-1

As Dr. James Gebel said:

9) Oral or stomach tube feeding via an "NG" (nasogastric tube) (a tube put down one's throat to the stomach) or (more commonly) via a "G-tube" are routinely used to feed stroke victims, both temporarily and indefinitely in patients with stroke or other brain injuries who cannot feed themselves, whether due to swallowing problems (which occur at least temporarily in most stroke victims). Such feeding and hydration are by modern medical standards considered as ordinary and unburdensome as eating and drinking on one's own. Such feedings are, in fact, less expensive than what an average American spends on food and water, and are easily administered a few times a day by a family member, requiring much less effort than cooking three meals a day. Terri Schiavo's husband, parents, or siblings could easily administer such feedings. They are by no logical measure extraordinary or unduly burdensome by any reasonable standard (moral, medical, or economic).

Dr James Gebel never examined Terry Schiavo in person, according to Fr Cekada. He made his assessment from video footage and copies of scans and medical reports alone.

Plus, are we basing our definitions of Ordinary and Extraordinary treatment on what the Conciliar Church says?  I understand that it was JPII who decided that feeding tubes constituted Ordinary treatment.

So, here is Fr Cedaka's response to Dr Gebel. (from the site you linked to.)

Dear Dr. Gebel,

Someone forwarded to me your comments about my articles on the Schiavo case..

A number of other people involved in health care have written to me about the medical aspects of the case.

I not qualified to decide whether your medical opinion or other conflicting medical opinions about PVS, therapy, etc. are more in accord with the principles of medical science.

But common sense tells me that the method you used to arrive at your opinion -- reviewing CT images, watching a video and reviewing summary/excerpts regarding testimony given in deposition transcripts -- is no substitute for examining a live patient.

Unlike other doctors directly involved in the case, moreover, you have not been cross-examined on either your methods or your conclusions. Be that as it may, I am qualified to speak about the moral issues in the case, and indeed, I am also obliged to do so.

If what you seem to be claiming is true and Terri Schiavo was somehow able to eat and drink by natural means, there is no dispute that those who cared for her would have been obliged to provide her with food and drink. To have withheld these would have been a mortal sin (unjust direct homicide) against the Fifth Commandment.

However, my writings on the Schiavo case centered on something else: the principles that Catholic moral theology would apply to removing a feeding tube.

I do not want my parishioners to be left with the impression -- due to the high emotions and bitter controversy fanned by the morally bankrupt media and by various lay and clerical grandstanders -- that something is a mortal sin when it is not.

Who knows when any one of my flock may be called upon to deal with the issue of a feeding tube for himself or a family member?

Here, put very bluntly, are the two essential questions in moral theology that I have sought to resolve:

(1) Does the Fifth Commandment under pain of mortal sin always require a sick person who is unable to eat or drink by natural means to have a doctor shove a tube into his nose or poke a hole into his stomach in order to provide food and water?

(2) Does the Fifth Commandment under pain of mortal sin then always forbid such a person to have these tubes removed, no matter what grave burdens -- pain, revulsion, depression, expense, etc. -- their continued use may impose on him or another?

The answer to both questions is no.

Having a hole poked in you, a tube shoved in and then having to eat and drink that way would be burdensome for any normal man.

Like the IV drip mentioned by the moral theologian McFadden (whom I quoted elsewhere), one could maintain this procedure would be morally compulsory "as a temporary means of carrying a person through a critical period."

"Surely," however, "any effort to sustain life permanently in this fashion would constitute a grave hardship." (Medical Ethics, 1958, p.269.)

(Perhaps some priest, layman or doctor who rejects this conclusion could get his own feeding tube inserted, live that way for fifteen years, and let us all know in 2020 whether the experience was a grave hardship or not. Any takers?)

Insisting (as some have done in the Schiavo case) that one is bound to this under pain of mortal sin (otherwise, euthanasia! murder!) contradicts Pius XII's teaching that one is bound only to use "ordinary means," which he defined as those "that do not involve any grave burdens for oneself or another."

Imposing "a more strict obligation," the pontiff warned, "would be too burdensome for most people and would render the attainment of a higher, more important good too difficult."

So, even though as a doctor you may well consider poking holes into people and inserting permanent feeding tubes "by no logical measure extraordinary or unduly burdensome by any reasonable standard, moral, medical or economic," Catholics must nevertheless draw their understanding of extraordinary means from the Church's moral teachings -- rather than from the practices and pronouncements of the medical-industrial complex.

In sum, by the standards of Catholic moral theology, the permanent use of a feeding tube constitutes extraordinary means and is therefore not obligatory. Like all such means, one is free to use it, "as long as one does not fail in some more serious duty." (Pius XII)

But one cannot maintain that a Catholic is always bound to use a feeding tube under pain of mortal sin – still less, that the refusal to do so constitutes "murder."

Don't try to invent a mortal sin where there is none.

Something that frequently gets overlooked is that Terry Schiavo had the eating disorder Bulimia which is likely to have been the result of childhood trauma.  I can only imagine the distress that someone with this condition would experience as a result of being of being continuously fed through a tube inserted into her stomach.  Her family were entitled to object to the withdrawal of the machinery that kept their traumatised daughter breathing, but it was her husband who had the final say, traditionally speaking.

I agree that a feeding tube could be a temporary measure following a stroke, for example, and where recovery is possible.  But as a means of prolonging life indefinitely, that's a different matter, especially when there is no indication that recovery is possible in any way.

#9

The Sedevacantist Thesis / Re: Sedevacantists and Akita

Last post by Baylee - Today at 02:18:17 PM

Do people really base their rejection of the Sede position on the personality traits and foibles of Sede clergy?

And emotional reasons.  Don't forget the emotion.

#10

The Sedevacantist Thesis / Re: Sedevacantists and Akita

Last post by Baylee - Today at 02:16:19 PM

I like to remind myself that, the same clergy that are the biggest asserters that the 1968 NREC is "invalid" and the 1968 NRPO is "doubtful" also promulgated the idea that Michael Schiavo had a "God given right" to murder Terri Schiavo (Cekada) ....

What?

Forcing a feeding tube into the stomach of someone with lifelong Bulimia whose body has been destroyed by the ravages of that condition, who is effectively brain dead and who is being forced to breathe by a machine, could easily count as cruel and unusual punishment in some quarters.

At any rate, such treatment, given involuntarily, goes way beyond what the Church has traditionally described as 'Extaordinary' treatment, which we are entitled to refuse.

Fr Cekada was one of the few, sane commentators who pointed this out, thank goodness.

Michael Schiavo did not simply decide to remove the feeding tube, but all food and water, even from the mouth.

The SSPV thoroughly refuted Cekada's argument.

https://www.wcbohio.com/articles/the-execution-of-terri-schiavo-1

As Dr. James Gebel said:

9) Oral or stomach tube feeding via an "NG" (nasogastric tube) (a tube put down one's throat to the stomach) or (more commonly) via a "G-tube" are routinely used to feed stroke victims, both temporarily and indefinitely in patients with stroke or other brain injuries who cannot feed themselves, whether due to swallowing problems (which occur at least temporarily in most stroke victims). Such feeding and hydration are by modern medical standards considered as ordinary and unburdensome as eating and drinking on one's own. Such feedings are, in fact, less expensive than what an average American spends on food and water, and are easily administered a few times a day by a family member, requiring much less effort than cooking three meals a day. Terri Schiavo's husband, parents, or siblings could easily administer such feedings. They are by no logical measure extraordinary or unduly burdensome by any reasonable standard (moral, medical, or economic).

OK, so Fr Jenkins came up with a different conclusion while also applying Catholic principles.  However, in the matter of the New Rites (which is what we were discussing before you brought up the Schiavo case) they both agree.  In fact, all of the sede clergy agree with him on the New Rites.