Our Holy Innocents Today, by John M. Grondelski

Fr. Shenan J. Boquet: Restoring Human Dignity at Christmas
December 28, 2022
Stolen Innocence: The Spiritual War on Children and the Family, by Jack Rigert
December 29, 2022

[Image: Sacro Monte di Varallo (Varallo Sesia, Italy), Chapel 11 – Massacre of the Innocents, Polychrome clay statues by Giacomo Paracca, ca 1587]

The Feast of the Holy Innocents should remind us of the abortion holocaust, not immigration debates. The Church’s vestments are red because the children bled and were dead, not because the Holy Family fled.

By John M. Grondelski, Crisis Magazine, Dec. 28, 2022

John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is a former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. All views expressed herein are his own.


John M. GrondelskiToday, December 28, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents
. It commemorates the decision of King Herod to slay boys in Bethlehem and its environs two years of age or younger because he felt betrayed by the Magi, who failed to report back to him the whereabouts of “the newborn King of the Jews” (Matthew 2:16-18).

Our liturgical calendar is not chronological: we mark the martyrdom of the Holy Innocents before we celebrate the Epiphany (and, in the United States, we push that Solemnity from its historical place as Twelfth Night to an adjacent Sunday). … 

Continue reading >>>>