The King Herods of This World

On November 14th, 1940, 515 small twin-engine German bombers dropped 500 tons of explosives on the industrial city of Coventry, England. Two thirds of the city was damaged. There was such a high level of destruction that the German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, later coined the term “Coventried” when describing similar destruction in other enemy towns. “Coventried.”

The Coventry Cathedral, a soaring, beautiful gothic cathedral built in the 14th century was firebombed and destroyed that night. The next month, on Christmas, the BBC ended a radio program by having people sing in the bombed-out ruins of the cathedral. The broadcast made popular once again an old lullaby, with sad lyrics and a haunting melody, known as the Coventry Carol. It was written back in the 1500s, when England was still Catholic, as part of a nativity play.

The lullaby, in four short verses, recounts the slaughter of the Innocents in Bethlehem.  Recall Herod had the babies there killed after the magi departed, but not before the Holy Family fled to Egypt. The feast of these Holy Innocents, martyred for Christ, is celebrated every year on December 28th. Here are the last two verses of the Coventry Carol:

Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.
That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Someone once sent me a message which includes a beautiful sentiment on why we teach and learn music. “Why music?” it stated. “So you will be human. So you will recognize beauty. So you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world.”

The King Herods of this world have no interest in the infinite beyond. That makes life difficult for the rest of us who do. An ancient bishop asked:

Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil…You are not restrained by the love of weeping mothers or fathers mourning the deaths of their sons, nor by the cries and sobs of the children. You destroy those who are tiny in body because fear is destroying your heart. (St. Quadvultdeus, Office Dec. 28)

Bishop Sheen wrote, “These Innocents died for the King Whom they had never known. Like little lambs, they died for the sake of the Lamb…Innocent lambs in the Passover bled for Him in centuries past; now innocent children without spot, little human lambs, bled for Him.”

The innocent little lambs are bleeding today. Modern-day tyrants destroy those who are tiny in body because fear has destroyed their hearts. And what do they say to justify their actions? “There are too many people. There’s not enough food. There’s not enough energy to sustain us.” But these are hardly original ideas. Arguments like these were made before the time of Christ.

What is original are the modern-day attempts to solve these problems:

They don’t have enough food on a certain continent? Give them birth control. They need better housing and clean water? Give them birth control; condoms. They don’t have proper education? Give them birth control; cancer causing pills… (Janet Smith, “Contraception. Why Not?”)

This is not mere misguided compassion; it is government policy.  Look up Kissinger Report. Henry Kissinger, as a teenager, fled Nazi Germany in 1938 with his parents to New York. In 1974, as President Nixon’s Secretary of State, Kissinger authored Memorandum 200. This was the year after the US Supreme Court conjured up the idea that we could slaughter innocent unborn babies. Kissinger’s Memorandum’s goal was to foist contraception upon the world, keeping populations down in order to capture other countries’ natural resources.  To my knowledge this policy has never been rescinded.     

And what has been the result of this foisting of contraception on the world? Everywhere it has been introduced there is now an epidemic of sexual disease, sexual violence, abortion, pornography, and all manner of sexual degeneracy. At the same time, whole populations of peoples have been decimated. The cultural landscape has been “Coventried.”

This should shock none of us. If you’re scratching your head over the lack of ambition and feminization of men in recent decades, understand that, due to the intrinsic evil of birth control, these men no longer have any traditional reason to get married. No longer called to be the head of their family to provide for women, they are now called to compete with women. This has led to them acting like women.  Now many even identify themselves as women.

And now some people have lost their jobs for not playing along. A few years back in England, a judge ruled against a tax expert who lost her job for Tweeting that men cannot turn into women. The judge ruled that the tax expert’s belief in biological science violated the dignity of others and was “not worthy of respect in a democratic society.” The judge concluded that the woman was “absolutist in her view” that there are only two sexes.  

I was called an absolutist once—about 25 years ago, by a priest in Kansas City. During Mass one Sunday, he wanted people in the pews to stand and be recognized for their volunteer work, making sandwiches for the poor, providing blankets for the homeless, and other such social justice projects printed out on a list.

I looked at the list in the vestibule after Mass. It included a pro-life coordinator role and stated that, if one were interested, he needed to make an appointment with the diocese. I did. The person there told me the coordinator’s job was to place some material, occasionally sent by the diocese, on a rack in the church’s vestibule. That sounded easy and harmless enough. But then the diocesan employee shook his head and said, “The pastor will never let you do it.” I naively asked, “Why not?” He said I would see.

He was right. I met with the pastor. He was okay with me making sandwiches or distributing blankets. But as far as trying to educate people about the destruction of human life in the womb and the consequent harm done to women, I was an “absolutist.”

Are you an absolutist? Will you someday be charged with a crime for being an absolutist? Will you be convicted for stating the truth? Think on that and ponder this: The Church has the absolute truth. It was given to her by the absolute truth Himself, Jesus Christ. The Church once converted a pagan world, a world tired of vice and materialism, to this truth.

Today’s neo-pagans are tired of Christianity. Look around at the vast level of destruction in our culture of death. What then are you and your family to do? First of all, do not let fear destroy your heart, and look to the Holy Family and what they suffered. Look how St. Joseph, the protector and patron, had to whisk his wife and baby out of Bethlehem in the middle of the night. The Virgin Mary, for her part, humbly submitted to her husband’s lead. And Christ? Calvary for Him started in Bethlehem and shadowed Him his whole life: “A sword for the Babe, stones for the man; the Cross at the end” (Sheen).

Why did God allow that to happen to His special family? It’s not complicated. He did it for us!

With the example of the Holy Family no Christian family can ever say that their sufferings and hardships are more than God can demand of them. No Christian can ever say that Christ is asking more of Him than He demanded of Himself, His mother, and His foster-father. We face trials and troubles, but we understand that our few short years are just a proving station, a preparation for a life of unending peace and happiness. (Kevin O’Sullivan)

The King Herods of this world have no interest in the infinite beyond. But we do. We have faith in God and His plan for our families. This faith makes us human. It makes us recognize beauty amidst the darkness on our journey to an infinite beyond this world. And, God-willing, when we reach our destination and meet with Christ, He will look us in the eye and state: I convict you of absolutism!—Now come, share my joy.

Image from Wikimedia Commons