The Killing of Holy Innocents by the New King Herods

By Deacon Keith Fournier Published on December 29, 2015

Just before their Christmas recess, the United States Congress passed an omnibus spending bill which funds Planned Parenthood and failed to pass the Abortion Nondiscrimination Act, which would have protected Pro-Life organizations, institutions and churches from being compelled to participate in the taking of innocent human life in the womb. This was a profane way of entering into a holiday recess which included the celebration of the Infant child of Bethlehem.

On December 28th many Christians remember the male Hebrew children slaughtered by Herod, who are traditionally referred to as the Holy Innocents. Matthew’s gospel tells the story:

When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi. Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet: A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.

Quodvultdeus, a deacon of the 5th century, asked, “Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil. But because you do not understand this you are disturbed and in a rage, and to destroy one child whom you seek, you show your cruelty in the death of so many children.”

He continued: “You are not restrained by the love of weeping mothers or fathers mourning the deaths of their sons, nor by the cries and sobs of the children. You destroy those who are tiny in body because fear is destroying your heart. You imagine that if you accomplish your desire you can prolong your own life, though you are seeking to kill Life himself.” 

The New Holy Innocents

Every child killed by legal abortion is a Holy Innocent and every politician who supports the killing carries forward in time the evil of Herod. Every Catholic Christian is duty-bound to embrace the teaching of their Church concerning the fundamental right to life and act on it in the exercise of their citizenship.

It is summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life. . . . Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.”

All Catholics are to be morally coherent in the exercise of their citizenship, which includes how they vote. The term “morally coherent” is used in a 2002 instruction from the Catholic Church called The Participation of Catholics in Political Life. In other words, a Catholic citizen cannot vote for someone who denies the Right to Life to children when another serious candidate opposes abortion.

The Catechism explains that the Right to Life cannot be denied in any truly just social order: “The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation,” it says …

… The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined.

The New King Herods

Elected leaders and political candidates who oppose the Right to Life are the King Herods of this hour. They explicitly or implicitly continue the moral evil. They are also present in both major political parties. We must not support any candidate for public office who does not recognize this right to life. This is not about being “single issue voters.” Rather, the dignity of all human life provides a lens through which we view every political issue. Without Life there can be no other rights because human rights are goods of human persons.

There are those who try to use Pope Francis to persuade Catholics and other Christians to back down from an unequivocally pro-life position, in a mistaken notion of mercy. They are selectively reading this pope and actually promoting an agenda at odds with the Bible, the Christian tradition and the teaching of the Catholic Church.

On September 22, 2013, Pope Francis addressed an international gathering of Catholic Gynecologists and told them “Every child that isn’t born, but is unjustly condemned to be aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, has the face of the Lord.”  He is reminding us all that along with our defense of the child in the womb we must also defend the rest of the poor and vulnerable. None, to use the words of Francis, “can be discarded.”

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