December 28th. Today we commemorate the Massacre of the Innocent Children. It reminds us of the immanent innocence of children, and of our inalienable duty to surround them with love, to protect them and to guide them as they grow up.
A news item this morning on BBC TV made it clear that some were already commemorating. The message reads as follows:
Sir Elton John and his partner have become parents to a son born to a surrogate mother in California.Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John was born on Christmas Day…. “Zachary is healthy and doing really well, and we are very proud and happy parents,” said the couple. “We are overwhelmed with happiness and joy at this very special moment,” the couple told the website in a statement.
Last year, the couple, who were married in 2005 after 12 years together, tried to adopt an orphan in Ukraine. However, Ukrainian officials said Sir Elton, 62, was too old and his civil partnership with Mr. Furnish, 48, would not be recognised as a marriage by Kiev.
Obviously nobility bestowed by a temporal royal, lots of money and media-enhanced fame, open many doors. Elton John has been declared too old to become a father by means of adoption. Who says? He decides that he not only wants to become a Daddy, he also wants a Christmas Child. Visions of Holy Joseph and Immaculate Conception?! What EJ wants, he gets, period. And the child you ask? Well, may we assume that the little laddie has meanwhile been flown out of California on a private jet to their happy parents’ place, wherever that is for the time being, such that they can hold them close to their cheAst, tenderly bottle-feed them while softly humming a candle-in-the-wind lullaby?
This news makes me reflect on the persecution of the Catholic Church by the media in the past year. I remember the sixties well: the church was powerful and its priests were touted to be great with children. Almost everybody then knew that “great with kids” often derailed into abusive activity that was, indeed, not so great for the children’s’ wellbeing. Yet there was no outcry, no protest: the reverend pastor was quasi-untouchable (as was the mayor, doctor and police chief). Only recently was the abuse recognized as criminal and was society ready to prosecute the guilty, rightly so.
In 2010 the media has an iron grip on information selection and opinion making, while their ethical values, generally speaking, have little in common with the so-called “mainstream”. I believe that the insemination (presumably artificial) of a surrogate mother in California, from a man that already had been declared unfit for “papaship”, does not rhyme with Christian Moral Teachings. It is part of a life style and practice that has been adopted, even promoted, by the “world mediagenic community” where libertarian hedonism and egoistic behavior are the rule, irrespective of broader society morals, and irrespective of rights of “innocent children”.
As was the case with abuse in different times, the crusade against modern forms of infant abuse will not start tomorrow. The power of the perpetrators simply prevents it. King Herod has had many followers. History will repeat itself. Unfortunately that doesn’t help today’s little victims.
