At Mass the other day, I heard that passage in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’” (23:29-30) It makes me wonder if I had lived during the time of the prophets, would I have been one of those who wanted them stoned to death?

So too, if I had been alive when Christ was on earth, would I have heeded the call or hated the man and the message?  It’s nice to imagine that I would have been more like Mary Magdalene than like the members of the Sanhedrin, but more people rejected Him than listened and followed. If it’s a mistake most people make, it’s a mistake I probably would have made too.

And then I wonder if I had lived in the 1850s whether I would have opposed slavery? Or would I have been one of that large group that said: “Yeah, it’s not great, but you know, it’s not one of the key issues of the day.  It’s not going to decide my vote – not like, say, tax policy or voting rights in the western territories, important stuff like that.”

Would I have said: “Look, there’s a lot of disagreement over that issue.  I’ve read articles – serious articles by real scientists – that say black people are not as advanced as we are and so they’re just not capable of governing themselves.  So although I don’t want to own slaves personally, I’m not willing to deprive others of their constitutional right to own slaves.  If a person chooses to own a black slave, then that’s his or her right.  I am not going to prohibit his or her free choice.”

(But wait, you say, that’s the “free” choice to own another person and destroy his or her freedom!  Yes, but then again, the “free” choice we’re talking about today is the choice to terminate a human life.)

Would I have been like one of those Catholics who, knowing full well that the Church had condemned slavery, found ways of rationalizing my way around all that and insisted on supporting it anyway?  Would I have been one of those who said, “Lincoln might do away with our slavery!  That’s it.  Secede!  A country without the right to own slaves is not a country I want to live in!”  I have to say, it worries me.

But the lesson one might take from this sort of reflection, I suppose, would be that, if the Church says doing X is an “unspeakable crime” (as it insists is true with abortion and infanticide in Gaudium et Spes 51), if it seems clearly contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and if “scientists” seem to be rationalizing away what seems obviously the reverse — Really? Black people and Jews are sub-human? Does that seem likely? — then it’s probably time to “get on the right side of history” and vote against people in favor of (a) a person’s right to own slaves, (b) the government’s right to rid Europe of Jews and others (including who are genetically or mentally unfit), and (c) a woman’s right to kill an unborn child.

Yes, I know.  There are “really good scientists” who say that the unborn are not really human persons.  Some suggest we shouldn’t say they have a heartbeat – better to call it “cardiac activity” – or even to call embryos “living.” Really?  A baby in the womb isn’t “living,” but an earthworm is?  Isn’t human?  Then what is the embryo?  A guppy?  A lizard?

Sorry, the latest genetics drew the curtain on that fraud years ago.  A clump of cells?  Yes, so are we all.  (That’s so idiotic.)  A living human but not fully a “person”?  That’s what they said about black people and Jews.  Not only has discriminating between “full human beings” and “quasi-human beings” always been a mistake; it is among the worst mistakes we ever make.

But we’re supposed to keep quiet about all this lest we “trouble” Catholics who are “uncomfortable” with the Church’s teaching?  Sorry, but maybe it’s the Church’s job to trouble people about such things.  People should be troubled when they’re complicit in “unspeakable crimes.”  And just to be clear, by “unspeakable,” Vatican II didn’t mean we shouldn’t speak about them.

How indelicate of us to bring up – and during an election! – that millions of lives are being terminated.  How “impolitic” to point out that there’s a presidential candidate who supports abortion up to the moment of birth and who wants to allow infants born alive to be left to die.  These issues are so complex.

Well, I honestly hope that I would have been one of those Catholics who opposed slavery and opposed the treatment of the Jews with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength.  I’m terrified at the thought that I might have been one of those Catholics in 1938 who accommodatingly said “Yeah, I know Bishop von Galen gets all worked about this ‘Jewish question,’ but Cardinal Betram says we should avoid confrontation.  He rang church bells for Hitler’s birthday.  And did you see that Nuremberg Rally?  Really impressive.  Hitler fills people with uplift and hope.  That’s what the country needs.”

I hope instead I would have read that passage, Mark 9:42, where Jesus says, “Whoever offends one of these little ones…it is better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck, and he were cast into the sea,” and said to myself, “If the Bible says don’t kill but protect the ‘little ones,’ then I had better ‘gird my loins,’ stop thinking like man does rather than as God does and bid Satan to get behind me.”  Then at least I could say: “I didn’t vote for those murderous bastards.”