Last week there was an attempted kidnapping of a six month old, right out of the stroller and his grandmother's care. Then over the weekend there was a kidnapping, this time a two-month old was snatched from his mother's arms by thugs who broke into the house. They knew exactly who they were after.
Yesterday, the papers announced that the infant had been found--alive and unharmed in a trash can. Some neighbor lady's dog HAD TO GO at 3 a.m. and led the woman to the alley where she found the baby.
Now it comes out that it was another neighbor who had "ordered" the kidnapping, and paid good money ($3,000) to the thugs to get her a baby, since she had been leading her boyfriend on for nine months about an impending birth. When she presented the little boy to her truck-driving, often-absent boyfriend, he was moved to tears, and then to suspicion. Turns out he reads the papers, too. Knew about the missing baby in their neighborhood. When he looked a little dubious, she grabbed the baby and ran out of the motel room where they were staying. He went to the police. She went to the trashcan.
Is this a statement on our society?
The woman involved in this deception and kidnapping has other children, by another man. She was surgically sterilized years ago. Her boyfriend has another child, too, and not by her, evidently. The strange patterns of use and abuse of relationships have made so many headlines and editorials here in Chicago. But sometimes nobody wants to say what seems obvious: these are not just signs of the breakdown of the family, or of marriage. They are the first stages of social chaos. The children who survive in situations like these--how great a percentage will turn out to have serious emotional disconnects throughout life? How many will be capable of fidelity? Heavens, how many will be capable of holding a steady job (presuming one can be found) and of contributing to a stable society?
And what are we being called on to do?
4 comments:
Thats horrible!!!! I heard about that yesterday when i was on the internet doing some emailing. Havn't people thought about adoption??? It could have been cheeper than paying those thugs that amount of money to steal a baby from someone else who loves thier child so much. What is the world comming to???
People have become commodities. There was an article recently describing the third child as a required testament to one's affluence. Yuppies are off to to adopt trophy babies from far-off lands, while children of color or with illnesses await homes domestically.
A person's value is now determined by their degree of wantedness by someone else. I want a baby, I should have yours. I don't want a baby, I should abort it.
That's what the world has come to.
You ask an important question, what can we do about it?
Remain faithful, build families that triumph over difficulty, instill in our children the inherent value of fidelity, and pray hard for the human family of the 21st century.
You hit the nail on the head, Sr Anne, in saying that it's gone beyond the breakdown of the family to social chaos.
It's always been true that people have done weird things. But in our society some of the weird things are becoming more common.
Last year I visited the relatives of one of the sisters. Her niece is very troubled and has had I think 4 children by 4 different men. One of the little girls she had didn't understand why everyone in sister's family has the same last name, because all of her siblings have different ones.
The embryonic stem cell stuff fits right in with this mentality that somehow we have a "right" to anything we desire. That the desire, the "want" constitutes a right. Or you could put it this way, that we are somehow victims of an injustice if we don't have all that we want and desire.
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