Young Catholics who stand with the Church point to a brighter future.
There has been media and literary discussion lately for one reason or another about the Nazi atrocities of World War II. It is maintained by some commentators and historians that the civilian population of Germany and its surrounds under the heel of the Nazis knew what was going on in the labour camps but felt they could do nothing about it; or even acquiesced in secret agreement with this scandalous destruction of people for no other reason than their race. We recoil with horror and think that we would never be so craven. But are we any better?
Among other articles, I read a recent book review by Alan Gold of The Words to Remember It: Memoirs of Child Holocaust Survivors in the Weekend Australian Review (30-31st May 2009).
Many of these Jewish survivors, now elderly grandparents, are giving voice for the first time to the horrific experiences they endured at the hands of the Nazis.
The review is arresting for many reasons, but it struck me forcibly that this heartfelt and moving reflection recognises fully and with outrage the unspeakable horror of the wanton wholesale destruction of the innocent.
He finds the most deeply distressing, perhaps, the happy photos of the children before the war, so soon to be “dragged from their homes and schools and friends, classified as subhuman, brutalised, starved and tortured. A million and a half Jewish children were slaughtered Those children… became the dust of Europe.”
And further on, how they have finally found the words to describe their heretofore unspeakable experiences “under a regime that gave legal sanction to treat its own citizens as subhuman.
“Take away a group’s humanity, portray them as rats and bacilli and it becomes most simple and acceptable to exterminate them.” A truism that continues to be well exploited by pro-abortion activists around the world.
Are we really any better than the Nazis? Barack Obama being invited in triumph into the halls of Notre Dame University, by those who should be his opponents, has shone new light on the enduring tragedy of abortion. But this light may be a light that many of its proponents might ultimately rather not have had upon them. It has been easy enough for waverers or pragmatists to quietly refrain from stating their views for or against abortion in the veil of silence that so often covers this taboo subject.
But, as young student and columnist Michelle Romeu last week noted (The Record June 3, Vista 4), this attempt to carry the day through sheer force of personality may have had the opposite effect. Now, we know that Notre Dame’s leadership has not been staunchly Catholic for many years. But while the university president may be in the US President’s pocket, it seems that many of the students are emphatically not. A certain public polarisation of views has taken place, and the ability to remain silent about one’s position on abortion is diminished in the flurry of controversy that has accompanied the invitation to the President to give the Commencement address.
The President and his advisers certainly see that the Catholic Church (very irritatingly and inconveniently) stands virtually alone among the Christian Churches in its requirement as a tenet of faith to believe and uphold the sanctity of human life in all situations, from natural conception to natural death; and thus to reject contraception and abortion.
What the President and his advisers have missed is that many thousands of young American Catholics stand with the Church. Neither do they understand the depth of faith and the depth of catechetical knowledge that quietly exists in these young Catholics. These young people are not fooled by rhetoric about tolerance for differing beliefs, they know the truth of the matter. The truth that abortion kills children, millions of children, and that no words can change the truth of that.
I see hope in this young journalist. It is the young who will continue to fight for the young; the young, in the flower of their own youth who will reject the notion that destruction of the innocent solves any problem. I pray for them, that their ideals will remain strong in the face of the vicissitudes of modern life, and that they will refuse to compromise their belief in the sanctity of human life.
There are few, if any, survivors of the abortion holocaust. But maybe one day our children will seek out those rare abortion survivors and enshrine their memoirs for posterity, as a reminder that these horrors must not be permitted to happen again.