Beyond the march
“God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that they might exist.”
In the fall of 1768, colonial unrest in Boston resulted in British troops being sent in to restore order. Tensions were high between the colonists and British, and escalated as the months wore on. After sunset on the evening of March 5th, a crowd of colonists confronted a group of British soldiers. First they started throwing snowballs at them. Then rocks and other debris. Some colonists began to arrive on the scene with clubs. The soldiers opened fire, by command or by accident it is still unclear. When it was all over, six colonists were wounded, and five were killed. The first killed was a man named Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native American heritage who was at one time a slave. Of course, the Boston Massacre became one of the pivotal moments in the lead up to the colonists’ decision to fight for independence from Britain. A hundred years after his death, Crispus Attucks became one of the icons of the abolitionist movement in Boston, and his name will be forever remembered as part of this nation’s history. History has shown that Crispus Attucks’ life mattered.
In France in 2008, Vincent Lambert was riding his bicycle when he was struck by a car. The accident left him brain damaged and a quadriplegic. He was able to breathe on his own, could swallow, would respond to his name by turning his head, and he could follow people around the room with his eyes. In 2019, after his devout Catholic parents fought the government to keep him alive, his fate was determined by the European Court of Human Rights, who ruled that his feeding tube would be removed. Nine days later, Vincent Lambert died of starvation and dehydration. Did his life matter?
In 2019, an English woman in her twenties with mental disabilities and a mood disorder was found by her doctors to be 22 weeks pregnant. The father was unknown. The doctors felt that it was in the best interests of the woman to force her to have an abortion, since she was incapable of raising the child. The woman’s mother, a devout Catholic, fought for the life of the unborn baby and said she would raise it. On June 21st, 2019, the British Court of Protection ruled that the woman would be forced to have an abortion, for her own best interests. Did that unborn baby’s life matter?
In 1923, Claude Newman was born in Stuttgart, Arkansas. He was a black, illiterate sharecropper who was raised in Mississippi by his grandmother, who he dearly loved. She got married to an abusive man when Claude was sixteen, and three years later Claude shot and killed his step-grandfather in cold blood. While on death row, Claude got a Miraculous Medal from another cellmate, which began his conversion to the Catholic faith. After his conversion, it is said that he looked forward to his execution so that he could go to Heaven. On February 4th, 1944, twenty-year-old Claude Newman was put to death by the state of Mississippi. Did the life of Claude Newman matter?
We are living in a time where we, as a society, are fully immersed in what Saint John Paul II called the culture of death. This mentality starts when we no longer see all people as fellow children of God who’s lives are sacred. Instead, we allow ourselves to be divided into little demographic groups based on age, race, ethnicity, gender, income bracket, level of education, political party, or IQ score. We embrace the messages of the culture of death that if a life doesn’t achieve “this standard” or meet “that expectation” then maybe that is a life that doesn’t really matter. These are the messages of the culture of death, which drive people to look at others as somehow inferior, or deserving of less respect. These are the messages that divide. These are the messages that ultimately kill both body and soul.
The Book of Wisdom tells us: “God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things so that they might exist.” None of us are inferior in God’s sight. None of us are less deserving of respect. The born and unborn, the weak and the strong, the young and the old, we are all children of God our Creator. We are all precious in his sight. All of our lives matter to God. And if all lives matter to God, shouldn’t all lives matter to us too?