Wrong God

A vision: Jesus has just told His disciples to stop hindering the mothers who are bringing their children to Him for blessing. “Let the little children come to Me,” He says, “for to such as these belongs the kingdom of heaven.” Along comes the Reverend Anne Fowler in her clerical collar and places at His feet the dismembered body of a tiny infant. “I had this one killed so I could serve You,” she says. “Wrong god,” says the Lord.

A vision: on Judgment Day, it is the turn of the Reverend Anne Fowler, M. Div., Episcopal priest. “Lord, Lord,” she says, “look at all I’ve done for you. I got a theology degree, and the Episcopal church ordained me. See the collar? Not many women get one, you know. Didn’t I serve as chaplain for Planned Parenthood? Wasn’t I part of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice? Didn’t I counsel young women that abortion is a moral choice?”

Jesus asks, “Where is the baby?”

“The what? Oh, the pregnancy, the product of conception. Well, you know I just had to abort it. I’d broken up with my husband, and I was sleeping with a guy during my seminary studies, and he just wouldn’t be a suitable father at all, and I already had one kid, and I really, really wanted to be a priest. In the church. You know. For You.”

Jesus holds out His hand. In it are the torn and bloody bits of a small baby. “His blood has been crying out to me since that day,” He says. “You might have loved him. You might have cared for him. Did you not know that whatever you do for one of the little ones, you do for Me? Or to Me?” Then He covers the little body with His other hand and lowers it gently to the ground. In its place appears a beautiful and glorious young man who looks at her with pity and says, “Mother.”

Then two things happen at once. The Lord says, “Away from Me. I never knew you,” and the Reverend Anne Fowler begins a long, long fall.

An amicus brief presented to the Supreme Court, which is reviewing whether abortion clinics in Texas can be required by law to be sanitary and to employ doctors who would be allowed to admit patients to a hospital if they should, say, rip a hole in the uterus while suctioning a baby out, said that Anne Fowler “accidentally” became pregnant during her second year at Episcopal Divinity School. No, not running with turkey baster, but sleeping with a guy she figured would not be a “suitable parent.” I wonder who was babysitting the child from her broken marriage while she was having her fornication break. Was it between Theology I and New Testament Interp.?

“Already solely responsible for her daughter, Anne knew she could not complete Divinity School and pursue a career as a priest if she did not have an abortion.” There may be a certain three on the Court who, when they meet again, will find this compelling. “Well, sure, who wouldn’t kill any number of kids for a career as a priest?” To others of us, it is the most stunning perversion of humanity, religion, responsibility and, God help us, “divinity” that any sinful human mind could possibly concoct. Yet she presents it to the Supreme Court of the United States as a good argument not to place any restrictions, not even those of sanitation, on abortion mills. It strikes me that, like Gloria Steinem, she has built a career as a life-long excuse for that bloody, selfish decision.

It’s hard to pick a “worst of all” from this reeking pile, but this may come close. One of the achievements she touts as made possible by her baby’s death is that “she meets many pregnant women who are very young or struggling economically or emotionally” and reassures them that it’s necessary and right to abort their children. “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come,” said Jesus, “but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.”

I’m pretty sure you cannot bring others along to make sacrifice to Moloch and expect the approval of the Prince of Peace.