NEW PORT RICHEY, Florida, May 6, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Florida judge who authorized the killing of Terri Schiavo by starvation and dehydration was honored by his regional bar association last night with a ‘Special Justice Award.’
West Pasco Bar Association member Alan Scott Miller said that the Association decided to honor Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge George Greer’s achievements, noting that his “professionalism and integrity was punctuated by the way he handled the Schiavo case,” as reported by CNSNews. Miller added that the award is not just because of how he handled the Schiavo case, but “for all of his contributions on the bench . . . It’s like a lifetime achievement award for an actor.”
Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, responded to the announcement Tuesday in a release: “On the night before Terri Schiavo died, I said to the national media that Judge Greer was a murderer. I repeat that today. I use the word not in its legal meaning but in its moral meaning, that is, a deliberate action or series of actions that intentionally kill an innocent person. Terri was not dying until she stopped receiving food and water. Once deprived of that sustenance, she died. It does not require any legal or medical expertise to recognize that as murder. Nobody who has lost the basic capability to understand that should be honored.”
“Whatever judgment, furthermore, is made on Judge Greer’s legal authority to do what he did, no Court has the moral authority to directly and deliberately take innocent life, and those ordered to carry out such decisions are morally obliged to resist them by conscientious objection,” Fr. Pavone added. “Pope John Paul II made that teaching clear in his encyclical letter ‘The Gospel of Life.’”
Other religious leaders, including Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the Vatican, have described this tragedy in similar terms, as have countless Americans.
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