How often do you see a movie about Martians coming to earth
and we assume the best from them and we immediately become good and mutually
beneficial friends? It’s about one step
away from never. They are almost always soulless beings of evil intent bent on
destroying the American way. And because
they are hostile and soulless, we have a peaceful conscience in wiping them out
from the space in the universe that is wasted on them.
The sad part is that this is not just a vision of the
future, it is a reality from our past.
Inconvenient people are branded as soulless beasts, less than human,
often hostile, and therefore we are right to take their land and goods, enslave
them, kill them, until we learn otherwise.
(Should it not be the other way around?
Assume people are human worthy of respect until you learn otherwise?)
It is the exact same argument that continues to divide our
nation today. Can human beings in the
womb be labeled soulless globs of cells?
Can they be branded as hostile to their host when in every case the baby
is completely innocent in the process of showing up in the womb? It may be a horrific set of circumstances how
he ended up there, but isn’t he innocent of it?
Today we face the question: How are we going to label these
lives that, left on their own, will become an acceptable, ensoulled part our
community? Every time we vote we are
deciding what kind of people we want to be in this regard.
3 comments:
All so true, Fr. V. I just read the most incredibly beautiful testimony to the personhood of the unborn. The daughter of a woman I know just lost a baby born with anencephaly. This mother, knowing for months, that little Joey would die as soon as he was born, chose to love him and enjoy him as long as she could. She kept a blog as her son lived and grew within her and as she purposefully developed a relationship with him in utero. Yesterday's post is titled "Joey's Birthday and Funeral Services."
That last link doesn't seem to work. The story is at the top of the home page: http://beforeiformedyou.blogspot.com
mmm did you mean Marian or MarTian to be in the post title?
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