The Inquirer has an article this morning discussing various religious groups’ responses to the Schiavo case. As you might expect, Philadelphia’s Cardinal Justin Rigali condemns the removal of Ms. Schiavo’s feeding tube as an unequivocally “evil” act. Reform Rabbi and medical ethicist Mark Washofsky said “A person need not be at the doorway of death to decide medical therapy is not justifiable and… doesn’t belong.” On the other hand, Msgr. Kevin McMahon, professor of moral theology at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, pointed out that “you are discontinuing nutrition and hydration to someone who is not dying. You are introducing the cause of death. You are killing somebody, and killing is evil.”
Then we get this from Eileen Lindner, identified as “an official at the National Council of Churches”:
“The church might give guidelines,” Lindner said, “but in the end, my conscience must be guided by my own notions of God. That’s what the Protestant Reformation was about.”
(That scraping sound you hear is Martin Luther and John Calvin rolling over in their graves, by the way.)
Really? “My own notions of God”? And where might I get those notions? Not from any mainline Protestant church since the Reformation was all about individualism and freedom of conscience apparently. It was not, contrary to what some might be tempted to think, about reforming the church to bring it back in line with the catholic faith from which the Reformers believed the Medieval church had departed.
If Ms. Lindner’s understanding of the Reformation reigns at the NCC, we’re in worse shape than I thought.
A Thinking Reed 
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