"... as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc."
That an excerpt from the Catechism and part of a post I put up a week ago that seems particularly poignant today.
I'm struggling, as I'm sure we all are, with coming to grips with the visuals. The visuals relayed to us by the news reports of children crying, children being led away by distraught parents, children looking horrified while surveying the scene in front of them.
Yet it's another set of visuals, this one in my mind's eye, that I'm struggling the most with.
It's the visual of taking aim at a 5 or 6 year old child, shooting him or her while he or she looks back in horror and fear, and then making the willfull and particular decision to shoot the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one and the last one.
What kind of man can do such a thing? What kind of man, while eye-balling the aftermath and gore of shooting one child, can then shoot 19 more?
It's unfathomable. It's incomprehensible. It's inexplicable.
It's wicked.
It's evil.
It's darkness.
So what do we do?
There'll be all kinds of noise, all kinds of static about finding political solutions. But there's no political solution to this sort of thing. Not in my mind.
G. K. Chesterton is said to have uttered these last words before dying: "The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose his side."
What particularly are we doing about that choosing?
God help us choose. God help us do so now.
