High Treason of the Plastic Bag

It’s 6:30 am.  We get up to go to work and are fumbling in the car in the morning just hoping the darn thing turns over… we were up half the night, either worrying over an astronomically tight budget from the gas prices, our children, or something that is often just simply out of our control.  A ding alerts us on our social media app while warming up the car, it’s sent from a friend with Padre Pio’s quote, “pray, hope, and don’t worry,” as if to rub salt in the wound.

We start to back up and realize that we forgot to buckle our safety belts.  We let the sign of the cross and our road prayer, in a way, take precedence over needed earthly common sense and practicality.  Ironically Padre Pio was the one who coined the phrase: “duty first, even before holy things”.:  Wow, is that sobering for the fanatical religious…

Then we get the seat belt chime – slow and steady – it’s as if an overly caring parent or schoolteacher were robotically shaking their finger at us.  Each just-as-annoying-as-our-alarm-clock chime sarcastically plays in our imagination; it’s as if their pointer finger falls with each chime saying: “safety first.”  As I get-it-together, which is an outdated 80’s term for buckle up, something dawns on me as I harness myself in… my safety is a bigger criterion than others’ safety – such as that of the unborn infant, in the once-safety of its mother’s womb. Then a lesser crime comes to mind too…

While driving to work, seemingly the last plastic grocery bag in the United States of America is on the shoulder of the road.  We pass by creating a safety current for it to float in the woods quickly, and the gust makes the handles flail like arms reaching forward to hurry it along into the woods like a fugitive; like a Saint Thomas Moore in a way fleeing to embrace his family prior to arrest (forgive me, Father Moore, we shall discuss this at length in eternity I hope!).  It makes its way into a still wildflower and grass patch, only to be picked up by a poor man walking by who needs a satchel for his t-shirt and pants he got for a few dollars at the Goodwill.

States now have high fees to pay for store owners distributing now-forbidden plastic bags – and even decomposable paper bags in areas too! Understandably so I suppose to some degree, as they clutter the area as eyesores and sadly end up in the bellies of marine life often.  It is sad.  The problem is that for those of us who do recycle and reuse (and it’s time-consuming, it’s work!) we end up paying the price for those who are too lazy to be bothered.  Yes, crushing my bottles and bringing my bags to the recycle bin takes time and money, yes.  Our many thanks to the yo-yos that don’t recycle…

The bigger problem is that buckling my safety belt and our store owners not carrying free plastic bags is punishable by law yet placing a frightened young lady and her unborn child into the hands of a legally paid assassin, if you will, only to be ripped apart (figuratively and literally, respectively) by elites of society for “medical use” or deemed as “medical waste” is not punishable.  Crazy, isn’t it?  What would happen if one of those “doctors” infants suffocated, God forbid, on a plastic bag while playing around the home?  Or someone was ejected through their windshield on the highway for not fastening their safety belt? It would probably be front and center on the 11 o’clock news.  The family, townspeople, and neighbors would be devasted, as we would be if a close relative or neighbor lost their baby or adult loved one.

But why wouldn’t those same people be distressed over the murder of his or her patient’s baby?  Why is that not on the news?  I could hear the news now if God had his own broadcast station: “Tragedy occurred today in (your hometown).  An infant, unborn, was murdered in the womb.  Eyewitnesses say that the pregnant girl was coerced with guilt by her parents and boyfriend, and unfortunately, she ended up caving under the pressure, and the child was terminated.”  It’s a sad state of affairs when the enemies of our youth are the members of “our own household,” as Our Lord states in Matthew 10:34-39:

Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.                                       

Yep, there we have it.  Those are the words of the Jesus who is “gentle and meek,” but not as the neo-hippie and most of the liberals (I personally met a pro-life democrat, voting is a separate case) would prefer us to perceive him; such as former President Bill Clinton, who made sure to quote Jesus Christ’s “neither do I condemn you” in order to defend himself after an affair and interestingly the rest of the statement where Jesus says “go now and sin no more” somehow got left out. (John 8:11). Many of our politicians are more concerned with plastic bags, seatbelts, and banning cigarettes… marital affairs and little babies are small potatoes.

If we were young, what would we have done in such a situation? What would we have done if faced with such pressure from those who are “closest” to us?  It’s easy for us to be stern with others when we haven’t been in their shoes. We shame from afar, like the religious leaders in the Gospel reading a while ago that passed by the robbed man, left for dead in Luke 10:25-37.  Yes, abortion is murder.  But we must not forget that those involved are accomplices, and many times accomplices have more blood on their hands than the one being charged!

That is why the propagating of that terrible habit especially among Catholics of shaming the young woman, or even girl, who has the abortion not only compounds the confusion of her – now the only one “caught” and excommunicated – by the fingers pointing only at her, but perpetuates such activity by increasing the shame factor; and perhaps this can explain some of the “rebelliousness” of today?  It’s odd, we are essentially excommunicated from society if we don’t recycle plastic bags and buckle up.  Marine life and my safety take precedence over our very own offspring as Americans – and we wonder why God is allowing our country to experience insurgency from within and without.

I reference the Catechism here:

Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors (CCC 1735). 

Seeing Holy Mother Church says that, in her kindness and wisdom, a lot of these abortions are brought about by added duress by those closest to them, and the social pressure on our youth!  Therefore, who are most in need of reconciliation?

Back to my morning trip to work. I continued down the road.  In my mind’s eye, I see that incriminating presence of the plastic bag and my admonishing seat belt reminder appear on one side of a justice scale in my imagination… on the other side of the justice scale?  You guessed it, legal execution of America’s children in the womb.  Lord have mercy…  which side of the scale drops in our lives?