On The Feast Of The Holy Innocents . . . A Meditation On the Sins Committed Against Children
By MSGR. CHARLES POPE
(Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this article on December 28, 2022, and it is reprinted here with permission. To view a video he put together on this subject, please visit msgrpope.com.)
- + + Today, we observe the Feast of the Holy Innocents, a feast commemorating the young children, of even younger age who were cruelly murdered by the paranoid and crazed killer known as Herod “the Great.” So paranoid was he that others might usurp or limit his power that he killed three of his own sons, and his wife. He ruthlessly killed many others as well. As his own death drew near, according to Josephus, Herod decreed that in order that the nation properly mourn his death, one member of each family should be killed in his honor, and thus the mourning in all Israel for him would be sincere.
His last and final act as King was to rise from his deathbed and sentence to death a group of Jewish zealots who had removed an Eagle he placed over the entrance of the temple. They had thought the image a desecration. Having killed them, he himself died (in bed) the next day.
Herod was a cruel tyrant and a ruthless and paranoid killer. Calling him “the Great” can only be a reference to his skill in architecture and building and to his headship of the equally cruel Herodian dynasty.
Yet here Christ was born and found, in the midst of crisis and disaster. More than ever, the Christmas message is relevant. For despite our cruelty and despite the crises of this world, Christ is still to be found. He was born in one of the most crisis-torn regions of the world. He bids us to find Him in just these sorts of places and times, as if to say, there is still hope: The mercies of the Lord are not exhausted, His compassion is not spent; it is renewed each morning (Lam. 3:22-23).
That he was willing to be born in such circumstances is clear, and from this we see His mercy.
But from our perspective he should not have to have been born like this. And thus our call to repentance remains. This crisis at Christmas was our human doing, our insensitivity. As Scripture says, He came unto His own, and His own received Him not (John 1:11). That’s us the Scriptures are talking about, No room in the inn.
And while Herod may be said to have acted alone, we cannot evade all responsibility, for to some extent we all participate in making and maintaining a cruel world where such ignominies routinely happen.
Children have much to suffer in this world of our collective making. And while not all of us are equally guilty of contributing to the suffering of children, none of us are wholly innocent either, if for no other reason than our silence.
Our culture has sinned against children by sexualizing them, robbing them of their innocence at an earlier and earlier age, and exposing them to all sorts of indoctrination and experimentation in schools. The most recent horrors center on exposing even kindergarteners to confusing sexual messages and practices related to transgenderism, homosexuality, “drag-queen story hours,” and many other practices that desensitize and groom little children in sexual matters about which they need not know so far before puberty.
We used to have a discretion about this; we used to protect little children from sexual matters, rightly concluding that they were too young to understand and that such matters could trouble and confuse them. Adults speaking to little children about these matters used to be considered a grave and even criminal violation. What is wrong with so many today? And how is it legal for doctors to administer puberty blocking drugs and even perform mastectomies and genital mutilations on minors (with or without parental permission)? Imagine the health complications in stopping puberty, a natural and essential stage of growth! How can a minor make such life-altering and often permanent decisions?
It is a sin against these children to incite sexual confusion, indulge it and even cooperate in dangerous hormonal and surgical interventions in service of a lie that one can alter their sex. All this used to be obvious to us until about five minutes ago in our culture.
Next, consider that most children born today are no longer born into the lasting family units they deserve with a father and mother committed to one another till death do them part. The problems begin with fornication, which is rampant in our culture. And while most do not think of this as a sin of injustice, it is. It is so because of what it does primarily to children
Many children are also conceived of fornication. Tragically most of these children who are thus conceived are outright killed by abortion. Eighty-five percent of abortions are performed on unmarried women. And for all the vaunted declarations of how contraception makes every baby a wanted baby, nothing could be further from the truth. Abortion has skyrocketed with the availability of contraception. This is because the problem is not fertility, it is lust, promiscuity, fornication, and adultery. And contraception fuels these problems by further enabling them. The promises associated with contraception are lies, it does the opposite of what it promises.
So, fornication and the contraceptive mentality (founded on lies) cause grave harm to children, beginning with death, in huge numbers. And the children, conceived of fornication who do (thankfully) survive are, nevertheless subjected to the injustice of usually being born into irregular situations. There are single mothers, some single fathers, and many other irregularities.
Add to this picture the large number of divorced families. And make no mistake, these shredded families cause great hardships and pain for children that include: children being shuttled back and forth between different household each week, having to meet “daddy’s new girlfriend” or mommy’s new “live-in boyfriend” and all sorts of other family chaos. Blended families also dramatically increase the likelihood of sexual and emotional abuse, since legal relationships seldom have the built-in protections of natural relationships.
To be sure, not all people are divorced in the same way. Some tried to prevent it but their spouse was unwilling, etc. Still the harm caused to children remains.
All of this misbehavior, individual and cultural, harms children. Not being raised in a traditional marriage dramatically increases a child’s likelihood of suffering many other social ills, starting with poverty.
The chief cause of poverty in this country, is the single motherhood, absent fatherhood: 71 percent of poor families are not married.
Children of single parent homes are two times more likely to be arrested for juvenile crime, two times more likely be treated for emotional and behavioral problems, twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school,
33 percent more likely to drop out of school, three times more likely to end up in jail by age 30.
And: 50 percent more likely to live in poverty as adults, and twice as likely to have a child outside of marriage themselves.
Not all of us do all these things personally and to the same degree. We should further note that abortion is complex and some women have recourse to it out of despair, others are pressured and so forth. But the point emphasized in this reflection is that all of us do contribute to the sort of culture that is increasingly poisonous and unjust to children if not downright deadly.
If nothing else, too many of (starting with clergy) are far too silent about the sins of injustice committed against children. Many remain quite silent while the bad behaviors adults pile up in our culture. Our silence is largely the product of fearing to offend other adults. Meanwhile children suffer, and the injustices pile higher, beginning with the body count of aborted babies and watered by the tears of surviving children who have had much to suffer.