Sunday

Screams in the Night

Over fifty years ago, Whittaker Chambers disclosed the terrifyingly real potentiality of a Communist takeover in the United States in his immortal testimony Witness. In this work Chambers described the feelings of one former Communist who defected because while living in Moscow "one night he heard screams." This statement has been on my mind a lot recently. My trip to Washington D.C. to mourn the Roe v. Wade decision in the March for Life was not uplifting, since no matter how many people march on the Courthouse every year, progress seems to be negligent if any. This past election, together with the looming menace of the Freedom of Choice Act is like a devilish mockery of any attempt to hinder or stop legalized abortion. Because while we struggle in vain with signs and bumper stickers, speeches and letters, and tirades on the blogosphere, who has not heard those screams? This time it isn't families torn apart by the KGB. It isn't the secretive terror of interrogations and midnight arrests, nameless graves and hopeless lives. It is the voice of the voiceless, crying out in endless agony. It is the silent condemnation of their tiny bodies lying in back alleys and dumpsters. The blood stained earth prosecutes our inaction. Thousands of times a day the inconvenient among us are torn to pieces lest their existence threaten society's comfort. Those screams are deafening me as I try to carry out my daily routine. Screams of children who are never permitted to beg for their lives, though God knows they would have if they only had the words. Human history is consistent in its ability to find new and appalling ways to mistreat anyone who is weaker or less competent to defend himself. But how can we rest easy in our beds knowing that the Satanic culmination of man's inhumanity to man is legal in a country which should be the world's last best hope? May God grant our prayers and unstop the ears of those who will not hear, and may America soon experience the true silence of a quiet conscience.