Schiavo Judge Attains New Fame, Infamy

By VICKIE CHACHERE, Associated Press Writer

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Amid the pitched legal battle over Terri Schiavo that has been fought through his court, Pinellas County Circuit Judge George Greer has been under the protection of armed guards, and friends say his family also is protected.

Death threats have been made against him for allowing Michael Schiavo to remove the feeding tube that has kept his 41-year-old wife alive for the past 15 years, and the Southern Baptist church that Greer belonged to for years has asked him to leave the congregation.


Greer — a conservative Christian and longtime Republican known for an easy manner — has become the public face of the judiciary in this internationally watched fight. But despite the mounting pressure, he has been steadfast in his rulings that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state and did not want to be kept alive artificially.


"There are very few people who have shown the will to stand up to raw power," said Stetson University Law Professor Michael Allen, who has studied the Schiavo case. "He's one."


"This is simply a case of people not liking this decision, and the fact that a judge is standing up to this is quite important," Allen added.


On Saturday, Greer rejected arguments by Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, that their daughter tried to say "I want to live" before her feeding tube was removed March 18. They argued that she said "AHHHHH" and "WAAAAAAA" when asked to repeat the phrase.


Greer said that "all of the credible medical evidence this court has received over the last five years" suggests Schiavo's behavior is not a product of cognitive awareness. Doctors have said Schiavo's past utterances were involuntary moans consistent with someone in a vegetative state.


When informed of Greer's rejection, Bob Schindler reacted with somber sarcasm: "He did? Great surprise."


It was Greer who first ruled that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state and would not want to be kept alive artificially. Three times he has ordered the feeding tube be removed, as requested by Michael Schiavo, and his rulings have consistently been upheld in appeals filed by the Schindlers.


Greer, 63, also stood up to congressional efforts to intervene in the case, rejecting an attempt by the House of Representatives to subpoena Terry Schiavo as a means to force the reinsertion of her feeding tube. Since then, other judges have followed in refusing to act under a newly crafted federal law allowing them to consider the case.


Greer, a former county commissioner, became a judge in 1992. He was recently re-elected to a six-year term, but has announced that he will retire once that term is up.


While in legal circles he is garnering acclaim for his consistent application of Florida law in the case, there has been a price.


Protesters now show up at his Clearwater home. The FBI (news - web sites) arrested a North Carolina man it said placed a $50,000 bounty on the head of a judge in the case, although officials didn't name the judge.


This past week, he parted ways with his Southern Baptist church, which had advocated keeping Terri Schiavo alive, after his pastor suggested it would be better if he left.


"You must know that in all likelihood it is this case which will define your career and this case that you will remember in the waning days of life," Calvary Baptist Pastor William Rice wrote to Greer in a letter than later became public. "I hope you can find a way to side with the angels and become an answer to the prayers of thousands."


Greer could not be reached for comment because of the frequent hearings on the Schiavo case, but longtime friend Mary Repper said she recently spoke with him and he sounds "worn out" by the case that has been on his docket for more than seven years.


"It's been going on so long and it's reached its fevered pitch," Repper said. "It's gotten so angry and so hostile, but he's still hanging in there."


Repper said Greer has taken comfort in being consistently upheld by higher courts, but his split with his church has been a blow.

"The people in that church should be ashamed of themselves, to demonize George and to ask him to leave for doing his job, for upholding the law," she said. "To me, that was the most offensive thing that has happened so far."

Greer has been asked to step down from the case five times and has refused.

Attorney Pat Anderson, who had represented the Schindlers for three years of the court fight, filed three motions for recusal but said she could not get Greer to budge.

"A lawyer told me when I first got involved in this case that he (Greer) does not have a reverse on his transmission," Anderson said. "He apparently is too prideful to say 'I made a mistake. I made a mistake because I didn't have all the information and I am sorry I made a mistake.'"


Gaudior, in sorrow that a life is ended in this manner

Dear Gaudior,

I feel so bad listening to the lawyers and what not speaking about this case. Do they realize that they are speaking about a human life?

If she does die, I do hope it does not end there. Certainly a murder suit should be brought up against her husband and against the judge. Our president does have the authority to dissolve a court, (it's been done before), although I don't think he'd want to cause a constitutional crisis.

Zenovia

There's a story in the Desert Fathers about a man being asked to leave the church because he had sinned. One of the Fathers stood up and said he'd leave, too, because he himself was a sinful man.

I'm not passing on the right or wrong of this judge. At some point, he has to make a decision and live with it. But to ask him to leave his church is wrong, too. I smacks to me of the type of self-righteousness that we ought to be rooting out in our churches. I always heard that the Church was a hospital for sinners, not a country club for the perfect.

It's a paradox, too, that the conservatives are calling for the judge to do what they have decried in liberal jurists: make it up from the bench as he goes along. If he has, indeed, applied Florida law, there is nothing that can be done except go to the legislature and change the law.

That's my 2 cents tonight.

BOB

BTW, for what it's worth, I'm appalled by what has happened to this poor woman. For my own part, I overrode an Advanced Directive with a Medical Power of Attorney for an elderly uncle who needed a feeding tube but whose directive said he didn't want one. Nobody dies of starvation or dehydration on my watch or under my care--NO ONE!!!!!!! Eating and drinking liquids is not extraordinary treatment. If it were, we'd all be extraordinary three times a day.

Bob,

You may be right about the application of Florida law. But if it is proper application I believe it speaks poorly for the legislative process. It seems almost inconceivable, even in a secular country as our own, that a law could be made that could be construed to define food and water as extraordinary measures.

I thank God for your stance.

Dan L

The assertion that Judge Greer is merely enforcing the law is beyond laughable, it is patently absurd. Anyone who has followed this guy's career with Terri and the Schindler family know that he has taken it upon himself to make all medical decisions for Terri, whom he does not allow to have any representation or advocacy beyond her abusive husband.

This guy is following in the great tradition of the great Nazi jurists who sat in judgement against the sick, infirm and socially outcast.

To my mind, being asked to leave a congregation is no more hypocritical than the power of excommunication in the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. Personally, I'd like to see a few more baptismal candles extinguished publicly to call these politicians to repentance.

My two cents -

Gordo

At the moment of Pachal Matins, our oulook should reflect more of Theophan's thoughts, as the last odes of the Canon teach us.

Speaking as a conservative, I do not want the judge to go beyond his powers. I also do not think that feeding and hydrating someone should cease because a clearly self-serving individual no longer wants to be burdened with a wife. On the other hand, I have to ask whether or not the law could have been upheld, insofar as judging the state of mind of a person is concerned, (whether they would want to be kept alive in a vegatative state), if the judge had been Catholic, or Orthodox. I ask this because evidence was presented on all sides, but how much weight and understanding is accorded to a piece of evidence is dependant on the understanding of the judge as to its value. For instance, for a Baptist, a protestant who relies more on the individual relationship with God than with what any church teaches, to say that someone was a devout Catholic, and would never go against the teachings of the Pope has very little meaning, and thus very little weight. For a Catholic, hearing the same words would weigh more with them, as they understand in their core what such a thing means to someone who IS devout. Likewise, a devout Orthodox Christian would not undertake to do something that is expresssly forbidden by the Church. Protestants have a history of making the rules up as they go along, and acknowledging the individual's interpretation of Scripture above all. This is in no way intended to insult our Protestant friends, just to point out that the mindset is so different that a fair interpretation of the evidence was not possible. Further, in many instances, a judge has the power to rule against a law that he feels is wrong. As a conservative, I admire the fact that the judge is doing what he is sworn to do: uphold the law. As a Christian, I am appalled at his lack of caring, lack of understanding, and, above all, failure to recuse himself and allow another judge to weigh this evidence. If he had wanted, he could have appointed others Terri's guardians. He chose not to do so. This to me says that Judge Greer was acting, not as blind justice, but as a Pharissee, determined to uphold the Law and to condemn others for wishing to heal on days when it was prohibited. May God forgive me for my own judgment, but I am appalled that the death-oriented agenda of some is to be followed over the interests of those who choose life, and care of the helpless.

Gaudior, in thoroughly foul mood about this case

Dear Gaudior,

Your post makes much sense and many valid points.

Your sister in Christ,
Alice

A crucial question for me in all of this is, how much of this whole controversy is driven by the Flesh and how much is driven by the Spirit. Even when people long for death, the physical body intuitively tries to stay alive.

After my stepmother fell asleep in the Lord last year (in hospice care for COPD with a do-not-resuscitate order), my dad never really recovered. He was supposed to go before her, or so they both believed. After all, he had been sick off and on over 30 years with various life-threatening conditions. He died 5 months later. He also had a do-not-resuscitate order, and, even though he was struggling to breathe with COPD, hospice counselled that I give him his prescribed medication to calm him, to make his breathing less stressful, and to make him as comfortable as possible. He also feared that what was happening to Terri Schiavo across the state could happen to him. An hour before Dad's passing, he sat up on the side of his bed, and said, "I need to get up." (The body wants to live to the very last.) I fluffed his pillows, and explained that I could not support his weight for standing for he was too weak to help himself at all, and that he should lie back down. He lay down, said he felt better, then passed away an hour later. If I had called the rescue squad, maybe he would have been taken to the hospital, where his lungs would have been suctioned out, and he would have eventually returned home to face more of the same. Such was not his wish, and his body finally gave its last breath back to the world in the place where he wanted to die, the house where he and Mom had lived in love for over 30 years.

There are no clear answers in situations like these that can be applied to everyone.

The Odes from Paschal Matins are predicated upon the assumption that those who are at odds with Christ (and Christian Teaching) have acknowledged their error and are taking action to amend their ways (repentance and conversion). It does not include a call to forgive or go silent about a judge and other individuals who are persistent in the process of committing murder.

In the Gospel of Matthew (18:15-17) the Lord taught: “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

When we sin we exclude ourselves from the Church. In order to reconcile ourselves to Christ and His Church we must first acknowledge our sin, make amends for our sin, and then seek the forgiveness that Christ offers.

We do not know everything that transpired between Judge Greer and his congregation. From the various news accounts it appears that his pastor and congregation attempted to provide him with counsel (that it is morally wrong to sentence an innocent to death by dehydration and starvation). If he refused to listen to his church they had every right to excommunicate him.

Forgiveness is predicated upon repentance. To insist upon forgiveness without repentance only leads to death.

Christ is Risen!

- the overwhelming assurance of the victory of sin and death bestowed upon us by that resurrection of Christ.

I am speaking of our attitudes. How the Baptists may think, and what they have a right to do, is not my concern.

- the overwhelming assurance of the victory over sin and death bestowed upon us by that resurrection of Christ.

I am speaking of our attitudes. How the Baptists may think, and what they have a right to do, is not my concern. [QUOTE]

Sorry about the very bad typo.

- the overwhelming assurance of the victory over sin and death bestowed upon us by that resurrection of Christ.

I am speaking of our attitudes. How the Baptists may think, and what they have a right to do, is not my concern. As followers of Jesus Christ the murder of all innocent life – including that of Terri Schiavo - is our concern. It is also appropriate for us to pray and encourage the Baptists to do what is right according to the Gospel commands. Not to do so is a cop out.

Regarding attitudes, to simply say “forgive all” without simultaneously calling those doing wrong to account (to do what is right) is, at best, shortsighted. At worst it points those doing wrong towards Death. The attitude of forgiveness can never be used to bless or tolerate what is sinful.

Christ is Risen!

Take it up with St. John Damascene.

Agreed. But as you suggested you have no idea what pointing the Baptist preacher did. I was not commenting on what the Baptists were doing, but on what we here were doing. And of all of the comments about Greer, there was little, if anything, that could be construed as calling out to him. Suggesting that he has been bribed, for example, cannot be seen as witnessing to him.

Thank you for your wonderful post. The protection of innocent human life is the duty of all.

I would like to address this as I have heard it before, and respectfully disagree with it.

My basis is Christ Himself. When He forgave his executioners, saying "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," had his executioners shown any sign of repentance?


Didn't Our Lord's action, in forgiving those who were still actively in the process of killing Him, show that we are to do the same?

Also, forgiving doesn't mean standing by and doing nothing. We can forgive Terri Schiavo's executioners and still continue to try and stop them.

There is nothing to take up with St. John Damascene. St. John’s call to forgiveness does not exclude the Gospel command from Matthew 18 to hold people accountable. St. John’s (and others’) call for acting in the spirit of forgiveness includes (but is not limited to) the need to ensure that one’s call to repentance is not done in a hypocritical way and that it be done without a personal grudge (since these can lead us to death). Nowhere in St. John’s writings does he reject the Christian imperative to work for justice.

I agree that our writings here have done little to witness to Greer. Last week I wrote a letter to Judge Greer asking him to reconsider and to grant a full, new review of the Schiavo case. [I wrote because his listed phone number is perpetually busy.] Others who wish to contact him can do so at:

The Honorable George W. Greer
Judge, Sixth Judicial Circuit
315 Court Street, Room 484
Clearwater, Florida 33756
Phone: 727-464-3933

I also sent e-mails and regular letters to the President, my congressional representatives, and the leaders of both political parties in the House and Senate asking them to take action. I am horrified that they have not been able to save Terri Schiavo. I do not know how people can sleep at night knowing they have not taken some form of action.

TG,

The same Lord who asked his Father to forgive his executioners also instructed the Church to discipline those who have done wrong and not to have anything to do with people who refuse to hear the Church (see the quote from Matthew 18 above). We cannot ignore this. Indeed, the spirit of forgiveness demands this. As you noted, forgiveness does not mean that we do not continue to oppose evil and, in this case, try to save Terri Schiavo.

Forgiveness can exclude penance, but it never excludes justice.

Admin

Dear Administrator:

I commend you for your writing, and Henry, and any others that may have written and not mentioned it in posts.

Dear Admin:

You're right about repentance being necessary for forgiveness. I hadn't read the background before I posted. The way the news presented it here one would have thought--as I did--that the man was arbitrarily tossed from his church for doing what he was sworn to do.

BOB

Several professional friends and I emailed Judge Greer our requests to reconsider at this address:

courts@jud6.org


Good Luck,
Sam

Thank you, sam! I've emailed and will tell friends.
CS

djs,

Thank you for your reminder of the need to exercise charity at all times, most especially with individuals such as Judge Greer. God knows that he is doing far more harm to himself spiritually than he could ever do to Terri.

My passions tend to get the better of me in this case because I sometimes think about my own daughter and how painful it must be for Bob and Mary Schindler to watch a court exercise its power against their daughter's innocent life. I am sure that if they could they would give their own lives for their daughter. Such is the sacrificial love that a parent feels towards his or her child!

I do also fear the growing collusion between the courts and the medical establishment in this case, since it can only lead to more horrors for the disabled and the ill, many of whom I have counted among my friends over the years.

I will only say that my family and I faithfully pray each night for all of those who are involved in this case, even for those who are on the side of the culture of death. God desires us to love our enemies, since he does not desire that any one should be lost, but that all come to repentance. I do not wish Greer, Schiavo or Seelos any harm, only their full repentance for their actions. The real tragedy (although I don't want to diminsh what is happening directly to the Schindlers and to Terri) is what is unfolding in the hearts of these men. I have no doubt, though, that when and if Terri passes through this ordeal, she will be the first one to offer intercession before the heavenly throne imploring the divine compassion upon those responsible.

Thanks again for the reminder of the need to maintain a supernatural perspective.

Blessed Pascha,

Gordo