St. Clare, Little Children, and Guardian Angels

The newest parish in America, St. Clare of Assisi Catholic Church, is celebrating her patron saint's Feast Day on Daniel Island. What joy! In these trying times, we really do need her clarity and courage to do the right thing. St. Clare, pray for us.

Today's Gospel reading (Matt 18:1-14) struck me with such force. The disciples ask Jesus who is the greatest. Jesus calls a little child over and says, "Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven ... and whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me ... See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father..."

I can only imagine the guardian angels of the millions of babies whose life was brutally cut short due to abortion. Are they pleading for justice? Mercy? I hope both.

Because we were on vacation and completely unplugged, I had missed some awful news about Planned Parenthood, namely their damning confession of trafficking of baby-parts. See here the courageous work of exposing PP but be prepared to throw up. I couldn't watch all of the clips. My younger atheist self could have though. In the scientific world, this has been happening for decades. See here for just one example. I never paid much attention to this since I was in the field of bacterial physiology, but I am still shocked and confused that I had no sense of outrage like I did when I discovered the horrible experiments conducted by the Nazis on the Jewish people. By the time I was in college and doing my own research, I had become numb ...  when I read papers outside my field, I skimmed the materials and methods section. Words like "fetal tissue" didn't give me pause. Lord have mercy.

The misuse of a human being is entirely unacceptable. We've made laws against it. Yet, in the name of progress we forget. The majority of it is government-funded work with our tax dollars. Is this really what *you* want? Where are the committees on ethics? Without a moral compass, we do unspeakable things. We not only misuse but kill outright without remorse. Why, we have more compassion for a lion. My husband sent this picture to me (sorry for not attributing it -- if you know who made it, please let me know):

It reminds me of Stalin's quote about the starving people. "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." 

Oh, but how we'll pay. If we do not stop the carnage, we'll have hell to pay. The guardian angels of the little ones are praying.