Holocaust Memorial Day – lest we forget
Holocaust day
January 27
A date at month’s end,
time again
to lay a smoothed stone
on a plain pillar
in fragile remembrance
of unutterable truth.
Smoke-filled tears
of heaven’s desolation
as mothers cried.
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“it is the cleaners, the bin men, the shelf packers, the shop servers, the drivers of the lorries, the post people, the orderlies, the receptionists taking calls, the local nurses and doctors, the shoppers for the cocooned….. We need eyes to see and to appreciate and to be grateful….. if there is an outbreak of generosity and gratitude; Eucharist is happening.”
Tragic memories.
Six million Jewish people specifically targeted, along with a variety of others, who were defined as “life unworthy of life” (in German: “Lebensunwertes Leben”) the designation for the segments of the populace which, according to the Nazi regime of the time, had no right to live.
It begins with setting up a hierarchy of human lives: defining some human lives (ours) as superior; others are therefore inferior, and may be treated as such.
During the Second World War about 15 million human lives were lost each year as a result of the war.
Today, 66 million human lives are lost each year as a result of defining the lives of unborn children as of less account than those of us who are already born. That statistic comes from the Lancet, a medical journal, and from the US State Department.
Those 66 million are counted as of such little account that they are not even counted as “deaths”, not included in the 57.3 million human deaths in the world each year.
We have not only failed to learn the lessons of history; we have greatly surpassed the death toll.
Kyrie eleison.
Thank you Pádraig McCarthy@1 for once again naming and spelling out another inconvenient truth. I hope the remaining 1,000+ Association members and all regular contributors to this forum will find the time and courage to support your stand, or rationally differ with you, both here and more publicly over the coming four months.
Eddie @2
Surely we have moved beyond looking to priests to comment and advise on everything. We lay members of the church are quite capable of informing ourselves about these matters and informing our conscience and acting accordingly.
Instead of always looking for comments from priests why not lay out your own thinking on the topic and the reasons why you have formed your viewpoint. Otherwise you risk being a stuck record asking for “Father’s” opinion and repeating what “Father’ has told us.
Jim Egan, you may not have noticed but over the past seven or more years this site has developed beyond being a forum for the ordained, though that was its original purpose in 2010. We look to such a virtual parish of God’s People to nourish open discussion of such important socio-religious issues, though not necessarily on Chris McDonnell’s Holocaust Memorial thread. Your own presence on this site should have told you that most regular contributors and commenters here are not from the ranks of the 1,000+ ordained members. Your last sentence tells me you know nothing about me.
I too am somewhat of an outsider, living in the UK but with an Irish heritage through my father born in Dublin. Married with children and grandchildren, I have spent my professional life teaching in schools. My occasional offerings and comments to ACP are not intended to intrude but to share wider concerns that all of us have, ordained or not, for the good of our Church. I do hope that no-one is offended by my being a blow-in
Chris #5:
In a Christian community, blow-in is what we are. Each and every one of us. That’s our common bond. That’s our identity.
It’s that wind of the Spirit – the wind of Pentecost, right from our Baptism.
We need all those tongues. Would that we had more voices chiming in.
Let us never fall into the temptation of thinking of some as unworthy.
Okay, at times discord seems to be dominant, even overpowering.
But, oh the heart-lift when the discord resolves into harmony!