Modern man’s struggle to be humane

By Tom Quiner

How could this happen?

I refer to the tragic child molestation accusations at Penn State. Children and adolescents have once again gotten caught in the cross hairs of modern man’s self absorption with gratification. The carnage in the wake of America’s assault on the defenseless is beyond human calculation.

We were shocked when we discovered how the Nazis had systematically exterminated the Jews because they simply hated them. Never again! is how the world responded. And yet the Penn State horror is not new in America and is of a magnitude that surpasses the Holocaust.

To my Jewish friends and readers, I do not minimize the profound inhumanity of the Holocaust. I do not mean to trivialize the loss felt by mankind in the needless deaths of six million Jews.

But America has exterminated 35 million pre-born babies in the name of women’s rights. And it wasn’t even done out of hate, it was done out of convenience.

Mankind has fought an ongoing battle to be humane. What does it mean to be humane? To treat people as human beings.

We’re not doing a very good job when we treat Jews as objects instead of seeing each Jew as a human being.

We’re not doing a very good job when we treat the baby in the womb as an object instead of seeing each as a human being.

We’re not doing a very good job when we let pornography flourish, a sickness that treats people as objects instead of as human beings.

We’re not doing a very good job when we turn marriage upside down and make it about desire and feelings alone without consideration for the children it affects.

We’re all struggling hard to be more human, more fully alive. Civil society has a self-interest in promoting policy that nurtures our “humanity gene.” Abortion, pornography, and redefined marriage laws work against humanity. They’re breeding self-absorption and self-gratification.

It’s no wonder children are getting caught in the cross fire.

The Catholic Church has taken the lead in cleaning up the mess in its own house. The incidence of reported child abuse in the American Catholic Church has dropped to almost nothing. Not so in our public schools.

As Edmund Burke said, “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” We need to be diligent in protecting the pre-born, the children, and adolescents in our institutions.

Our struggle to be more humane starts with protecting the most vulnerable. We need to do so much better.

We capable of so much more.

 

2 Comments

  1. Nick on November 16, 2011 at 7:08 pm

    Gay partners are capable of love and of raising happy children. I don’t see what is remotely inhumane about that, and increasing the number of loving couples — couples to adopt unwanted children — seems like a pretty humane thing.



  2. Kurt Johnson on November 16, 2011 at 8:21 pm

    Tom,

    Very good post. You make very strong arguments. I do disagree with you on abortion. According to your belief, a women would be wrong to take a “morning after” pill. I just can’t say that it is right to force a woman to carry a fertilized egg to birth if she decides early in her pregnancy that she does not want the baby. I understand that this means that there is a gray area regarding when a baby should be protected above the wants, or even the health or life, of the mother. I do believe that an unborn child should have protection the same as a regular person once the baby is viable, including using current medical technology. This leads to problems, if a baby could be raised in a test tube to maturity. But, I go back to my original statement, that a women should be able to decide within the first few months, preferably the earliest possible, whether or not to continue to carry a baby.