Makeshift services held outside Schiavo hospice (heating up)

PINELLAS PARK – Protesters outside Hospice House Woodside worshiped in a makeshift Easter church service without the church on Sunday morning, calling again for a miracle to save Terri Schiavo, who neared the end of her ninth day without food and water.

After the service, the two pastors who led the service were arrested in their Communion delivery efforts without incident.

About 25 demonstrators took improvised Holy Communion: pieces of Saltine crackers kept in a Styrofoam bowl and tropical fruit juice served in Dixie cups. The donation box was a plastic container commonly found in kitchen cupboards.

News photographers stepped between the singing worshipers to snap pictures and the pastors' voices competed with those of TV reporters doing live shots.

More at link:
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/news/feeds/0327schiavo.html

(Earlier a live shot showed people screaming in front of a rather large police presence.)

If Jeebus doesn't miracle a new brain into her head, will they question their faith? Is Judge Greer more powerful than Jeebus? Looks that way.

like everything else, they can blame Clinton's Penis : )

Susan

get there in one way or other. I swear his equipment is like a lightening rod to them. Makes you wonder just how poorly certain of them must regard their own - uh - shall we say - "stature"?

People like DeLay and congressional politicians keep asserting that the courts are "in contempt of Congress," whatever that means (as far as I know there is no such thing), and the fundamentalists believe them!

complete for me.

You're out of order! The whole trial is out of order!

Al Pacino in.....















..."and Justice for All"

How is it possible not to be in contempt of this Congress? It is, by its very nature, contemptible. Ugh!

seem to forget that God is not a 'yes' machine. He does not always grant our requests. Sometimes He, in His omniscient knowledge, says 'No'. People seem to think that whatever they ask God for, He will just say 'Here it is'. Would a loving parent always grant what the child asks for? Sometimes it is in the child's best interests to say 'No'. Its obvious these freeper nuts out there don't like hearing 'No'. Even from God.

Don't hospices get the same treatment?

From your post: Earlier a live shot showed people screaming in front of a rather large police presence.

"water for Terri" or something like that.

This is supposed to be Easter, a time to reflect and rejoice that life goes on. :shrug:

at least that's what I thought Easter was about. The eternal life offered by God to those who believe in Jesus, and the celebration of his resurrection after his Crucifixion.

Disturbing the peace ?
Organizing without a permit ?

Something ?

to get to their loved ones in the hospice today especially. Maybe the hospice figures that if they're given a place to rant, they won't cause very much mischief otherwise. :shrug:

they are right outside the doors of this sacred place?

... which means they should be able to have protestors removed, or cited, or both.

When we were having the Anti-War protests here in Feb 03, it was sleeting and windy. Several of us crossed the circle to stand next to the SBC building for shelter from the wind ... their security force promptly came over and told us we had to move off 'their property'.

Go figure.

Is that while these people are carrying on with their self-sanctimonious hypocrisy, their are other people who are experiencing extreme difficulty getting in to the hospice to see their loved ones. They too are being subjected to being searched and run through metal detectors as they try to spend some quality time with their dying loved ones, while these neophytes are outside supporting what could be more rationally construed as abuse of judicial process than any issue of lack of due process.

..................................
Near the other end is the misnamed Oceanside Estates, a government-subsidized apartment complex for the elderly and the disabled. There, Rick Avant can't stroll the grounds without cops descending on bikes and golf carts to warn him away from the fence.

...........

When Jackson asked one man to move his car, the visitor screamed an obscenity at the garage owner, and "then he walked off with a Bible in his hand."

..........

None of the men and women venture out anymore to sit in the manicured garden, taking in the fresh air and listening to music as they live out their last days. And their loved ones can't visit without going through checkpoints, security clearances and a macabre death vigil: the women with black lips and faux blood dripping down their faces, the guy with the bullhorn warning about damnation, the signs that demonize Terri Schiavo's husband as a murderer and adulterer, the man cradling the skeleton.

"Honestly, I think more of the people whose lives are being interfered with than I do about Terri," Avant said. "It's sad, they can't enjoy their own back yard. Just 15 minutes ago the SWAT team

more..........

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-asecschistreet27032705mar27,1,6116859.story?coll=orl-home-specialbreaking

Smirk protestors were arrested for simply standing quietly in the wrong spot. I remember nuns being arrested for stepping outside a first amendment zone in an anti-war protest.

"black lips and faux blood dripping down their faces" - instead of the Brooks Brothers paid repuke operative rioters, we now have Ghouls for Jesus rioters.

Scary they are coming from all over the country.

"And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." (Matthew 6:5-6)

Faith is a very personal and private thing, between people and God and between members of the congregations of those who choose organized religion.

So how can people behave this way, and how on earth can they advocate the merging of religion and government? :scared:

a plastic collection box, I wonder which bank gawd will put it's money in?

As my concern has been could this get out of hand and turn violent, something that is always a possibility when hysterical mobs are involved. However, these people have impressed me as having a propensity for jumping up and down, and talking all kinds of outlandish stuff, but when push comes to shove, I'm willing to bet their hearts will start pumping kool-aid.

At least that is how I perceive it. We'll just have to wait and see.

the fundie families bringing their children with them. They have programmed them into being just like themselves. There is no free thought.

I strongly support their right to expose children to *legal* forms of protest, just as I would if it were an anti-war protest or candle-light vigil.

The ones who encouraged their children to break the law endangered them and I would condemn that.

Especially when 80% of the country disagrees with them. It just encourages this behavior through positive reinforcement. The last thing you need is *more* shrieky protestors outside of a hospice, where people are dying and families are trying to say their last goodbyes. Have a little respect, folks.

wingnut right is really capable of. It's revolting.

I'll get a chance to pick a different one next time!

Now it's all about that walking piece of shite Randall Terry & his freak disciples getting as much face time as they can on TV.

Hell, the family wants them to leave! So why don't they respect the Schindler's wishes & just go home?

<<snip>
A short time later, Barnard and Gallagher took turns kneeling before Pinellas Park police officers and asking that they be allowed to take Schiavo Holy Communion. An officer calmly took Barnard's bible then cuffed him. Gallagher's arrest was similarly subdued.

BTW, my impression was that Terri is Jewish. She doesn't believe Jesus was the son of God if that is the case, nor do her parents. Why would she want to receive a "Christian" communion wafer?!?!

I don't know about Michael Schaivo.

administered last rites by now! If she needed the services of another one I'm certain her family would ask for it!

they administered last rites before they pulled the tube. Based on what I've read, her parents are asking for her to receive communion again. I think that her husband's lawyers are afraid it is some sort of trick to vacate the judge's order. I'm not sure about that, however.

But, I don't think that saltines and fruit punch in a dixie cup are what anyone had in mind.

I think the priest that administered last rights to my grandmother dipped his finger in the Chalice and rubbed it on her lips, but I'm pretty sure he didn't attempt the communion wafer! I found last rites very hard to watch that day. It was also done on the same day we decided not to hook her up to a feeding tube. I think we were all in a lot of pain that day!

... had to reread a couple of times, in my surprise :D

ritualized cannibalism on the lawn outside the hospice at this protest is pretty ironic, don't you think?

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - With their hopes of a miracle fading and other options exhausted, Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings reached a quiet resignation Sunday and asked protesters to go home as the severely brain-damaged woman spent a ninth day without food and water.

Those outside the hospice where Terri Schiavo is being cared for were not as calm, with the first of what would be four morning arrests coming as ministers attempted to bring Schiavo Easter communion. About a half-dozen people in wheelchairs later got out of them and lay in the driveway, shouting "We're not dead yet!"

Police protecting the hospice were loudly heckled, prompting Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, to come out and ask the protesters to tone down their behavior.

"We are not going to solve the problem today by getting arrested," he told the restless crowd of about three dozen people. "We can change laws, but we are not going to change them today. ... You are not speaking for our family."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=1&u=/ap/brain_damaged_woman&sid=84439559

Good luck with that.

And now they want to get it back in.

How sad.

And if it was by a ordained minister is it proper to use crackers and juice?

during the first Communion?

Michael W. Mitchell, of Rockford, Ill., is shown in this undated photo provided by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, Friday, March 25, 2005, in Seminole, Fla. Mitchell was arrested Thursday night after going to a gun store in Seminole and threatening its owner with a box cutter while demanding a weapon to ``rescue'' Terri Schiavo, the Pinellas County sheriff's office said. (AP Photo/Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, HO)


I wonder if these two were out on March 19 protesting the slaughtering of a 100,000 healthy Iraqis.
Brother Paul O'Connell, and Brother Hilery McGee, left, of the Franciscan Brothers of Peace in St. Paul, Minn., talk with reporters Friday, March 25, 2005, outside the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., where Terri Schiavo resides. (AP Photo/Steve Nesius)

franciscan@brothersofpeace.org

home page: http://www.brothersofpeace.org/

Their own private griefs have become incidental to a circus. Some may be wrestling with the issue of how far to go in end-stage treatments themselves. Meanwhile people are screaming that their decision will make them suicides and murderers if they don't choose life at all costs.