How are we to respond to the recent massacres? The supermarket shooting just last week, and then the horrific killing of children as they sat in their classroom. The headlines evince any number of others; last year on this day, a disgruntled employee murdered ten of his co-workers in San Francisco; last Sunday was the fifth anniversary of the bombing at the Ariana Grande ironically named ‘Dangerous Woman’ concert in Manchester; one may peruse the calendar for similar reports every day of the year.

We pray for the victims, even for the perpetrators, for their families and loved ones, for mercy and healing.

There will be the ongoing debate on guns, what the ‘right to bear arms’ means, and how far that right extends.

But behind that, there is a deeper moral and spiritual problem, that the culture of death begets death, the bitter fruit of the Evil One, whom Christ describes as a ‘a liar and a murderer’.

The inviolable law holds, that innocent life must never be taken, whether for apparently ‘senseless’ reasons, as in these massacres, or for purportedly ‘good’ reasons, which even otherwise sensible people justify, as in abortion, or euthanasia, or the extremities of war.

Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God, and it remains for ever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end; no one can under any circumstances claim for himself the right directly to destroy and innocent human being. (CCC, #2258; CDF, Donum Vitae)

It doesn’t work to deem some human life sacred, and some not. Such a schizophrenic view opens the very gates of hell, and we’re going to see a lot more mayhem and destruction unless we repent and turn back to God and His law.

The solution is quite simple, really. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live.

 

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