28 December 2018

Holocausts and the Holy Innocents


Among the things I noticed when I holidayed annually in Ireland was the sight of people with Down's Syndrome. It is no more remarkable there to see such jumans in the streets than to see, say, a West Indian or someone in a wheel-chair, in Britain. When you get back to Blighty, the streets seem suddenly strange because there aren't any.

Then it dawns on you why there aren't any. Rather as, just after the cattle trucks had rumbled off to the East, it must have been strange ... and then disconcerting and very frightening ... to wander round a German town and miss the Jewish faces. Ugly, isn't it, that the role performed in Nazi Germany by Gestapo or SS is performed in Britain by members of Caring Professions whom we each of us have to visit, especially as we get older, for our aches and infirmities. If anything, ours is a spookier ... well, let's be frank ... an even more evil society ... than Hitler's; one in which the Evil has dug its roots even deeper than it had in his Germany, because it is internalised among more people and more groups and more classes and more structures; and has been so manipulated that, far from being concealed, it is publicly appauded by our Media; and because the killing is, by a Diabolical masterstroke, disguised as Caring and performed by men and women whom we take for granted to be gentle. And yet, throughout my ministry, I've felt that I ought to discipline myself not to mention abortion too often in sermons lest people decide I am fixated on only one thing; or lest, in my own comfortable male and clerical self-righteousness, I traumatise women who've had abortions.

How evil does infect us all.

Even back in the 1970s, not long after the legislation allowing Abortion in Britain, it was, to my certain knowledge, common even for intelligent and articulate middle-class women to be pressurised by their GPs to 'terminate' a fourth or fifth pregnancy.

And now, in a few days, this whole, sick, evil process is about to begin in Ireland. I wonder where in Hell Dante's imagination would situate the Varadkars of our own time.

Spare a prayer for brave young women, in Britain or Ireland or anywhere, who embark upon a willed pregnancy and have to face some 'medical' bully. Spare more prayers for those put under enormous pressure to have 'tests' to see whether their 'foetus' is 'abnormal'. Find some more prayers for those who are assured, by kind and sympathetic people who only want to help them, that it would be wholly irresponsible to encumber the world with a Down's Syndrome human being.

And don't forget, in your prayers, those other victims; the women who have already been deceived and seduced into complicity in the killing of their own children.

16 comments:

Steve said...

Amen.

Donna Bethell said...

Bravo. Thank you.

Prayerful said...

One notable atrocious element of this evil law is that disabled children can be aborted almost until birth. I suspect the Referendum result was contrived by some means, particularly allowing ineligible voters from abroad, but sadly no evidence. Prayer and campaigning is there is left.

Happy Christmas Fr even in this saddest of times. Your wit and learning is a wonderful thing. I pray for you.

Evangeline said...

Thank you Fr. Hunwicke. We do all this, and yet we expect peace in our time.

Lady Jane Perdue said...

My husband works with kids who have Down's. They & their parents have joys unique to them, and it brings out the best in all to assist others with special needs.
"Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to Me." Lack of love & compassion is the real problem. Yes, there are few kids with Down's now allowed to be born. If only new parents were told that there are many who love to help with any special needs. They will not regret loving their child!

Lady Jane Perdue said...

My husband works with people who have Down's. They and their parents are among the happiest we know. Kids with DS have special joys that are unique to them. who are the "perfect" among us who pass a death sentence on those who are not "normal?" A lack of love is the most serious lack of all. Doctors feel obligated to offer abortion. How sad. Parents should know that there are many who love to help with extra needs and that it brings out the best in us to offer love & assistance. Every parent we have met find that all things truly do "work together for those who love God."

Zephyrinus said...

Dear Fr. Hunwicke. You have said it all.

Now await: The HOWLS of protest from The Enlightened Ones.

armyarty said...

I have a friend who was sent back to Germany as a small boy in the 1930s, because his mother had died, and his father could not care for him. He returned to the United States just before the outbreak of the war. On a visit, years later, he was out, looking at his old haunts, when he became disoriented, because he could not find the Schule Strasse.

A cousin told him it was returned to its original name after the Hitler period, and that was the cause of his confusion. It is now known as the Juden Strasse.

jaykay said...

Thank you for this, Father - from Ireland. Mr. V. is actually a Doctor, medical-type. I think he went to a posh Anglican boarding-school (Church of Ireland) but whatever they thought him of Christianity doesn't seem to have taken, let alone basic medical ethics. Could I suggest that we also pray for (as we say in Ireland) the likes of him? So many "educated" people enabled this evil, knowing the fools would follow them. As they did, including many highly educated among my own acquaintance - and family. They truly need prayer, and good example. For those who voted for it in full conscience of its evil - I think they may need exorcism. But thank you again, Father. You are a good friend to this benighted country.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Father. Is an adult woman who choses to have her unborn baby killed a moral agent and ought she be prosecuted?

Prolifers say, "no."

https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/an-argument-that-the-pro-life-movement-does-not-consider-women-to-be-moral-agents/

Michael Leahy said...

ABS, while Zippy, may the Lord have mercy on him (he recently died in an accident), was undoubtedly right, we are very far from the stage of prosecuting people. We can only pray for a time when enough people become so clear-sighted about the evils of abortion that all the criminals will be prosecuted and guilty women will be treated as the equals that they claim to be. In the meantime, unfortunately, it is more likely that such assertions, though true, might be counter-productive and inhibit the more important cause which is to stop the slaughter of unborn human beings. Women might evade earthly justice, but they won't evade the Other Kind.

Prolife activists are among the bravest and best people around. They deserve our prayers and gratitude.

Alan said...

You may be interested, Father, in this article from one of those of us who have "stayed behind" in the Lichfield diocesan magazine. Mr Whitehouse is the father of a daughter with Down's Syndrome, a member of General Synod, and my fellow-churchwarden.

https://www.lichfield.anglican.org/news/2018/02/16/valuing-people-downs-syndrome/

Banshee said...

The usual feeling is that most adult women who abort a child are suffering under duress, or are temporarily imbalanced, or are outright mentally ill.

This is the kindest conclusion, because otherwise we have to assume that Medeas are among us.

It also seems to be true, because most women going for an abortion without duress come up with the kind of reasoning that one sees in someone suicidal, or doing other self-destructive things. It is almost like self-cutting -- this idea that doing evil to oneself and one's baby will make things better.

But duress is very common, especially since a confused and hormonal woman is not hard to confuse and distress.

Women who have less hormonal distress during pregnancy seem to be a lot harder to cow into abortions.

philipjohnson said...

Fr.Fantastic piece of writing/sermon!It is the best writing i have read for many a year.Literature at its best in brilliant expose of the crass selfishness of modern times in a way which leaves me wanting to take it to my Parish Priest and ask him to read it out at Sundays Masses.I will endeavour to copy it down for posterity -to use when fine polemic will cut the Western selfish world into shame.Thank you and God Bless.

Johnjohn said...

Goodbye 2018. One of, if not the most, saddest years in the history of this little island that was once so dear to me. I heard a northern Ireland protestant loyalist saying recently that he and his buddies were absolutely dumbfounded at how this could have happened in the republic. Tragic.

Johnjohn said...

Goodbye 2018. One of, if not the most, saddest years in the history of this little island that was once so dear to me. I heard a northern Ireland protestant loyalist saying recently that he and his buddies were absolutely dumbfounded at how this could have happened in the republic. Tragic.