There are different ways of being a hypocrite, some worse than others. There are some of us – let’s just say all of us – who say one thing and do another, out of ignorance or weakness. The evil I do not want, that I do, we may lament with Saint Paul. Then there are others who magnify certain virtues and vices, while minimizing, or even praising or contemning as the case may be, others that are far greater – those who tithe mint and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. (Mt 23:23-24).

Having given up on the CBC and most mainstream media a while back, I had no idea why the flags were all at half-mast. Had the queen finally given up the royal ghost? When someone said that the Prime Minister had ordered such in remembrance of the 215 unmarked graves of residential school students discovered by underground radar, I paused. ‘Tis good to remember the dead, especially those forgotten, or who died in tragic ways. But something seemed off and disproportionate. We know not what happened to these children. They may have died of ‘Spanish’ flu, and been deemed infectious; perhaps there was a proper burial and grave markers which disintegrated over time. Yet, people are of course jumping to all sorts of lurid conclusions. Trudeau has requested a formal apology from the Holy Father, who did offer offer his condolences and prayers, not just for the children, but for all in the injustices that have been perpetrated.

But there is something deeper here than commemorating injustices were done to indigenous people and children. For, need it be said, in Canada far more than 215 children die every day by abortion – and those are only the surgical ones, to which we may add the children lost by the morning-after pill, abortifacients and the thousands discarded in IVF procedures. And all those countless babies are tossed into their own ‘unmarked graves’, or their corpses burned in incinerators, forgotten and forlorn. Where are the days of sorrow for them?

To add to the hypocritical irony, during the very week of remembrance for the indigenous children – and I do not mean to minimize whatever abuses were done to them –  our own parliament on June 2nd struck down by overwhelming majority (248 – 82) Cathay Wagantall’s bill that would have outlawed at least ‘gender-selective’ abortion. That is, choosing to kill a child just because he or she is the ‘wrong’ – that is, undesired – sex. Every single member of the Liberal, NDP, and Green parties voted against. The only ones voting in favour were 82 Conservatives (out of 119 – Erin O’Toole, their leader, voted against), and one independent (the indomitable Derek Sloan, whom I had the honour of meeting pre-Covid).

Here is Trudeau’s tweet, which will come back to haunt him on judgement day:

“81 members of the Conservative Party voted in favour of anti-choice legislation today. It is completely unacceptable that they will not support, protect, or defend a woman’s right to choose. Our government always has – and always will.”

Like those indigenous children, the unborn babies, female or male, don’t have much of a choice do they? What happens to a nation that not only kills its own children all the way through nine months of gestation, but rejoices in such, and can admit no reason to place any obstacles in the way of this modern holocaust to Moloch? What if 90% of abortions ended up being female? What if 90% of pregnancies ended in abortion? And how far are we from outright post-birth infanticide by euthanasia, already practised in passive, insidious ways?

Scripture has more than a few choice words for a people who sacrifice their sons and daughters to whatever Moloch they have chosen. We are descending into a darkness and a ‘state of barbarism’, as John Paul II put it, ‘that we thought we had left behind forever’.

It need not be so. While we strive to repair past injustices, we can also remember, respect and rejoice in all children, past and present, born and unborn, indigenous and immigrant, all of whose lives matter very, very much.

Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. (Mt. 25:40)

 

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