Remaining silent in the face of fury

Standing on a street corner after Sunday Mass the other day, I was assailed by fury.

I had joined a silent pro-life protest, organised by the Canadian parish I was visiting, and was carrying a placard that read: “Abortion kills children.”

A young woman,  who had stopped at the traffic lights, rolled down her window, made a rude gesture and started shouting: “Team abortion!”

She also called me a name I prefer not to print.

As protests go, it was pretty pathetic. Both hers and ours.

My fellow protestors numbered no more than twenty and were spread out on four street corners between Main Street and 16th Avenue in Markham, a quaint village north of Toronto.

My sign had clearly triggered this woman and I suspect she might have physically assaulted me had she not had one hand on her steering wheel.

I said nothing as I had been instructed to remain silent and not react to abuse. I had also been assured that if there was any trouble there would be someone there to film it. Well, no one bothered to film the scene.

Apathy

And to be honest, I was more upset by the apathy of the parishioners. There were hundreds at Mass that day but only a handful came to join the protest.

Before we set out, the priest gave us a blessing.

But he did not join us, nor did he address the issue of abortion in his homily. Instead he spoke for twenty five minutes about the impact of social media on young people’s self-image and quoted Psalm 139 – how we are all ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’.

His only reference to the pro-life silent protest was at the end of Mass. I wondered whether the priest, an excellent speaker, might have inspired more parishioners to come along, had he focused his homily on the final (optional) lines of Sunday’s Gospel. In Mark, Jesus declares: ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. In truth I tell you, anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

After Mass, we began to assemble with our signs, but most parishioners sailed past, looking the other way.

However, two curious children stopped to look at us. The older boy, who was about 12, told his little brother, who looked about seven: “Abortion is when a mother kills her child.”

A look of horror came over this child’s face before he was led away.

There is a wise line in Proverbs: “Without vision, the people perish.”

Around 44 million little boys and girls, fearfully and wonderfully made, perished before birth in 2022. This compares to 8 million people who die from cancer”

The “vision” referred to in the Old Testament is the light of God’s word – which makes clear how precious each life truly is, even before birth.

And, let’s face it, there is ample evidence that, without vision, people are perishing.

Abortion is the biggest cause of death on our planet today.

According to the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, around 44 million little boys and girls, fearfully and wonderfully made, perished before birth in 2022. This compares to 8 million people who die from cancer.

Blind

And yet our political leaders are not completely blind to the humanity of the unborn child. The problem is our politicians, media, and others speak out of both sides of their mouth when it comes to children in the womb.

A Devon woman has just won a nine year battle to have the five children she lost through miscarriage officially recognised”

The World Health Organisation is a prime example. Check out its statements.  On the one hand, it promotes “safe” abortions and “quality abortion care” and on the other, it laments the anguish and grief suffered in miscarriages – a “taboo subject” in “which a baby dies”.

Herein lies the great chasm in the abortion debate: the humanity of the child in the womb is denied when little boys and girls are unwanted.

When I returned to Belfast from Toronto, Baby Loss Awareness Week (October 9-15) was in full swing, with plenty of sympathetic media coverage. Notably, a Devon woman has just won a nine year battle to have the five children she lost through miscarriage officially recognised.

She – and others like her – can now apply for a certificate recognising the loss of a baby before 24 weeks during pregnancy.

Previously only those parents who had lost babies after 2018 could apply.

And, in Northern Ireland two Stormont ministers got on board.  Sinn Fein’s Finance Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald and Ulster Unionist health minister Mike Nesbitt also committed themselves to delivering a baby loss certificate scheme.

Choice

Both are in the “choice” camp when it comes to abortion – and Dr Archibald is a particularly vocal and staunch advocate of a woman’s right to choose.

Both these politicians have previously voted for “safe access zones” around abortion centres, where unwanted boys and girls are discarded as medical waste.

I do wonder if our politicians ever stop to think about their own choices.

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Although, for years, an avid reader, I never felt drawn to Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales – until now. This piece of literature, among others, now comes with a “trigger warning” from Nottingham University. It is among famous works of English Literature that contain “expressions of Christian faith”. The rationale for this ridiculous policy? It “champions diversity.” Who wants to tell them?

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Quote of the week goes to a Muslim politician, the British justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, who is opposing attempts by the British prime minister Keir Starmer to fast-track “assisted dying”, otherwise known as euthanasia or assisted suicide. Expressing her opposition, the minister declared: “For God’s sake, we are not a nation of granny killers, what’s wrong with you?” Indeed, the same question could be put to our Dublin ministers!