I’m in
Istanbul, waiting for a flight to New York City. I’ve just read a beautiful
meditation by Luigi Guissani, on the relationship between Christmas Day
(December 25) and St. Stephen's Day (December 26).
"Next
to the sweet contemplation of a God-child warmed by His Mother’s love, what a
contrast is the vision of Stephen dying under the pelting hail of stones,
covered with blood! With what horror our thoughts move from the angels’ song
and the affectionate faces of the shepherds to the shouting figures of
Stephen’s stoners, throbbing with hatred!
But this
juxtaposition is dense with meaning."
Guissani
made a powerful connection between the two events. I want to add some of my own
thoughts.
Mary and
Joseph gave birth, even though it was:
culturally unacceptable—because
they hadn't formally married before Mary's pregnancy,
extremely inconvenient—they
were in the middle of a long journey, and
legally dangerous—it
was against Herod's decree to kill all infant boys in their area.
In these
kinds of circumstances, giving birth to a baby requires the same heroism that
martyrs have.
December
28 is Innocents’ Day, when many Christians remember the infants who were killed
at the time Jesus was born. Pharaoh and
Herod both felt their power threatened by children. The same power-hungry spirit
that motivated Pharaoh to tell the Hebrew midwives to kill all baby boys, also motivated
Herod to order the death of all male infants under age 2 in Bethlehem.
Which one
is worse? Abortion or ianfanticide?
In the
end, there is no moral difference. If
one is acceptable, the other is too. Princeton University’s Peter Singer, said, “That a fetus is known to be disabled is widely accepted as a ground for abortion. Yet in discussing abortion, we saw that birth does not mark a morally significant dividing line… Nor is there any other point, such as viability, that does a better job of dividing the fetus from the infant.”
Singer is
morally consistent. And nearly every philosophy department in the
English-speaking world studies Peter Singer’s writings seriously. And because
of people like Peter Singer, the eugenics philosophy that took over the medical
field in the early 20th century, has again infiltrated the medical
field as the “quality of life” philosophy.
The same
spirit that has already motivated societies to endorse abortion as a right,
will motivate societies to accept infanticide and euthanasia.
The
response of the church is to “turn the hearts of parents to their children, and
of children to their parents”. (Malachi 4:4)
