Pervasive disregard for life
Archbishop Wilton Gregory spent a lot of time last week with the youth of his Atlanta Archdiocese, from the school kids to high schoolers and young adult ministry participants. He shared some thoughts that came together by the end of it, in The Georgia Bulletin. (Thanks, CWNews, for making it available to your readers.)
All of those encounters with our young people happened during a week in which three separate violent attacks took the lives of youngsters and teachers in school settings. I could not help but reflect on the disordered state of our world that seems to produce so many violent personalities who seek to harm the young. What is there in our society that seems to produce characters of such distorted mentalities that they would seek to harm the young and the innocent? I must confess that I was mystified at the events that occurred during the very same week that I was encountering such wonderful young people in this local Church.
On this most recent Sunday afternoon, I was part of the Life Chain outside our Cathedral and carried a sign that read “Abortion Kills Babies!†Then it occurred to me that a society that has sanctioned the taking of innocent human life within the womb may already have provided an overture for these later acts of brutality against children.
Mother Teresa made that connection a long time ago. She kept trying to warn the world that even more horrific violence than those school shootings were the likely destiny for a society that aborts babies. Dark as the logic is, the abortion mentality takes in — or ‘takes out’ — so much more than babies.
