Ahh who would of thunk it? This week will mark the one year anniversary since Terri Schiavo’s passing and all that political hardball being played with one persons life. Now the compassion is really coming out from the religous right as her family tries to move on:

WASHINGTON, March 25 /U.S. Newswire/ — Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, and an eyewitness to Terri Schiavo’s final hours, released the following open letter to Michael Schiavo tonight. Fr. Pavone will read it to a worldwide audience on an internationally broadcast religious service on Sunday morning, March 26:

A year ago this week, I stood by the bedside of the woman you married and promised to love in good times and bad, in sickness and health. She was enduring a very bad time, because she hadn’t been given food or drink in nearly two weeks. And you were the one insisting that she continue to be deprived of food and water, right up to her death. I watched her face for hours on end, right up to moments before her last breath. Her death was not peaceful, nor was it beautiful. If you saw her too, and noticed what her eyes were doing, you know that to describe her last agony as peaceful is a lie.

This week, tens of millions of Americans will remember those agonizing days last year, and will scratch their heads trying to figure out why you didn’t simply let Terri’s mom, dad, and siblings take care of her, as they were willing to do. They offered you, again and again, the option to simply let them care for Terri, without asking anything of you. But you refused and continued to insist that Terri’s feeding be stopped. She had no terminal illness. She was simply a disabled woman who needed extra care that you weren’t willing to give.

I speak to you today on behalf of the tens of millions of Americans who still wonder why. I speak to you today to express their anger, their dismay, their outraged astonishment at your behavior in the midst of this tragedy. Most people will wonder about these questions in silence, but as one of only a few people who were eyewitnesses to Terri’s dehydration, I have to speak.

I have spoken to you before, not in person, but through mass media. Before Terri’s feeding tube was removed for the last time, I appealed to you with respect, asking you not to continue on the road you were pursuing, urging you to reconsider your decisions, in the light of the damage you were doing. I invited you to talk. But you did not respond.

Then, after Terri died, I called her death a killing, and I called you a murderer because you knew — as we all did — that ceasing to feed Terri would kill her. We watched, but you had the power to save her. Her life was in your hands, but you threw it away, with the willing cooperation of attorneys and judges who were as heartless as you were. Some have demanded that I apologize to you for calling you a murderer. Not only will I not apologize, I will repeat it again. Your decision to have Terri dehydrated to death was a decision to kill her. It doesn’t matter if Judge Greer said it was legal. No judge, no court, no power on earth can legitimize what you did. It makes no difference if what you did was legal in the eyes of men; it was murder in the eyes of God and of millions of your fellow Americans and countless more around the world. You are the one who owes all of us an apology.

Your actions offend us. Not only have you killed Terri and deeply wounded her family, but you have disgraced our nation, betrayed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and undermined the principles that hold us together as a civilized society. You have offended those who struggle on a daily basis to care for loved ones who are dying, and who sometimes have to make the very legitimate decision to discontinue futile treatment. You have offended them by trying to confuse Terri’s circumstances with theirs. Terri’s case was not one of judging treatment to be worthless — which is sometimes the case; rather, it was about judging a life to be worthless, which is never the case.

You have made your mark on history, but sadly, it is an ugly stain. In the name of millions around the world, I call on you today to embrace a life of repentance, and to ask forgiveness from the Lord, who holds the lives of each of us in His hands.

— Fr. Frank Pavone

I am sure Michael Schiavo wants nothing more than to relive that horrible period of his life last year. Here is a though – how about Michael Schiavo’s right to life? He had given up years to tend to his wife while she was dying. That pain and suffering was prolonged by some self-centered right wingers who wanted to do nothing more than perform a gross act of metaphorical necrophilia while trying to promote their cause.

One thing that always got me about these Bible thumping, burning bush (damn wrong bush), religious fanatics. Terri Schiavo was proven to be brain dead. Autopsies revealed that she would have never recovered, even after Bill Frist, MD (Monitor Doctor) said she would have recovered. Well can these righteous believers think outside the box? Perhaps God wanted Terri to die. Perhaps God had some higher calling for her and now you have all pissed him off because you kept fighting his will.

Ah yes that could very well be the reason. God is now pissed at these people who use his name in every action. He is punishing them as we speak. Punishment number one would reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Punishment number two would be Pat Robertson and has rash of “speaking in tongues” lately. Perhaps the biggest punishment of all is that the movement of the Christian right is dead. Their antics and trying to get people to live by fear has fizzled.

True if I actually believed in there being some super, almighty being then I would definitely believe this to be the case. Luckily I don’t and I believe all these punishments are a sign of something else – AMERICA WAKING UP.