It lasted less than thirty seconds, but it was one for the books.
We were at our local Columbus Day Parade, watching our children march. All of the local politicians were out in force working the barricades. So were their campaign workers, including the boy no older than fourteen.
He was campaigning for Congressman Michael Mc Mahon, the Roman Catholic, Knight of Columbus who is ardently pro-abortion with the voting record to prove it.
The boy approached us, extending with a smile, a campaign leaflet. I returned his smile and said, “I’m sorry son, but in my home we only vote for pro-life candidates.” Immediately a man seated behind me snarled, “He’s a pro-life Catholic and I disagree with him.” (meaning me)
The boy stammered, searching for a few seconds for the appropriate response, and then it came, weak and half-hearted. Utterly programmed.
“You can’t be a single issue voter, sir.”
“Well son, I’m certainly glad to see that this single issue was pretty important to your mom when she was carrying you,” came my immediate and gentle reply.
He looked deflated, cast his eyes down, and walked away.
This is the corruption of youth. This is how it begins.
A boy just at the cusp of adolescence offering up an apologia for the “Constitutional Right” that has robbed him of 33% of his generation, friends he’ll never know, physicians who would have found a cure for the disease that will rob him of loved ones.
A boy whose parents will one day be taken from him years prematurely under the health care plan forwarded by Mc Mahon’s fellow travelers.
A boy parroting words he does not understand because he has in all likelihood never seen photos of aborted babies, listened with anguish to the testimony of former abortionists and the post-abortive mothers and fathers.
A boy who has no clue about the thousands of women who die annually from surgical and chemical abortions, or those who suffer the gynecologic, reproductive, oncologic, and psychological fallout.
He doesn’t know any better. He’s just a boy, and no doubt looks to his father the way my son looks up to me. To be fair, my children don’t know any of the fallout and the other realities of which this boy is ignorant.
But this much they do know:
They know that abortionists lie.
They know that a baby is murdered in its mother’s womb.
They know to pray for the deceivers, the deceived, and the slaughtered.
They know that all violence is sinful.
They know that their father and mother love life, embrace life in all of its imperfect beauty.
They know that they are loved by God and that God’s love demands that it be shared, not jealously hoarded, like the servant who hid his master’s money in the ground.
And they know that we expect them to be charitable in all things, with all people, and that this is never negotiable or for sale.
Not even if it means the highest office in the land.
Coming Home 
the sad thing is that right now he is parroting those words…but in a few years he will be acting on them 😦
He may very well grow up to be a man who believes in choice.
And if he believes in choice, he most likely will also believe in the promiscuous lifestyle that will be sold to him by the media, his peers and possibly even his parents. And the add-on to that lifestyle is abortion, becuase whereever there is contraception there is abortion.
Sadly, it might only be through direct experience or exposure to abortion that his views will change. It might be a beloved girlfriend who aborts his “choice” or a beloved wife who can’t have a “pregnancy” or whose life is shortened by breast cancer.
I heard a good comeback for the accusation of the “single issue voter”. I’ve used it several times and so far, no one has a word to counter… here it is: (I might have gotten it from Fr Corapi on EWTN but not sure)
“Suppose a candidate was in favor of drive-by shootings. He/she said “well, I am personally against it but cannot inflict my morality on others – I think people should have the freedom to choose whether to participate in drive-by shootings or not.”
“Would you be interested in this candidate’s stands on any other issues? or would you move on.”
“We are all single issue voters and abortions kill millions more people a year than drive-by shootings!”
Hey, he might have a change of heart.
When I was 14, I was an earnest pro-lifer. 😉
I was an earnest death-penalty protester, but now I favor drawing and quartering. I evolved.
Oh yeah, and this: 😉
[…] Coming Home relates an encounter with a young man who was dispensing leaflets for a “pro-abortion Catholic” politician at a parade. […]
As my parents say: “It’s not A issue, it’s THE issue.”
And I personally think of it this way:
“If a person who’s supposed to represent the people/protect the people cannot even stand up for life at the very beginning, how can I be sure that person is going to truly stand up for my life, even though I’m outside the womb?”