Posted by Brendan Malone
Today the Catholic Church commemorates the Massacre of the Holy
Innocents.
It is on this day that we remember the vile act of infanticide carried out
by King Herod the Great, who ordered the killing of all males under the age of
two in Bethlehem because he considered the young King of the Jews to be a
serious threat to his power, wealth and status.
The cruel brutality and evil of this act stands in stark contrast to the
joyful celebration of the birth of Christ that we commemorated just three days
ago.
Sadly, the Herodian state, which considers some young human beings to be
such a great threat that eliminating them becomes an acceptable thing to do, did
not die with the passing of King Herod.
Only weeks ago a cross-party select committee in our own country issued a
report which called the act of aborting an unborn human being an ?important
human right?, and which suggested that NZ abortion laws should be further
liberalized.
Just like the unplanned Messiah, NZ?s own unplanned children are
considered, by many, to be a threat to some perceived future happiness.
Herod carried out his act of infanticide in order to secure his future, yet
the grand irony is that within 10 years of doing this he would be dead, and less
than 70 years after that his crowning masterpiece of power and status, the
Second Jewish Temple, would be completely destroyed by the Romans.
So it is today, where many women, men, couples and families now carry
around the hidden scars of an act that they were led to believe was going to
bring them future happiness and security, not loss and pain.
Ultimately we all suffer when we live under a Herodian state where human
life is valued based solely on some subjective criteria or utilitarian
outcome.
As Pope Francis recently reminded us in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii
Gaudium (emphasis added):
?[The] defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and
every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human being is always
sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human
beings are ends in themselves and never a means of resolving other problems.
Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting foundations for the
defence of human rights, which would always be subject to the passing whims of
the powers that be?
I recently saw an Internet meme doing the rounds which read: ?What if the
cure for cancer is trapped inside the mind of someone who can?t afford an
education??
My first thought was; ?what if the cure for cancer has been lost to the
world along with someone we have already aborted??
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