AMONG Catholics, tomorrow is the feast (or solemnity) of the Holy Innocents, martyrs. The Orthodox Churches also commemorate the martyrdom of the children mentioned in St. Matthew 2:16-18, but on another date.

Herod learned that wise men, astrologers, who might have been kings of neighboring realms, were following the star to find the newborn King of the Jews so they could pay him homage. He asked them to return to him and tell him where the child would be found so he too could honor the baby king.

After their audience with the king, they set out. The star which they had observed at its rising went ahead of them until it came to a standstill over the place where the child was. They then offered Baby Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The wise men knew from a dream that Herod had the evil plan to kill the baby and eliminate a rival for power. So the wise men went on a different route back to their kingdoms.

Meanwhile, Joseph too had been told by an angel in a dream to flee to Egypt with Mary and the Baby Jesus. The angel told him to wait for his message that it was safe to go back to Palestine, for Herod was bent on destroying the Child Jesus.

On realizing that the wise men had deluded him, Herod then sent out his troops to kill all the male children, two years old and younger, in Bethlehem and environs. Thus was fulfilled what Jeremiah had prophesied: A cry was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation: Rachel wailing over her children, and would not be comforted, because they were no more.

The Church venerates these children as martyrs. They died for Christ and in his stead.

The new Holy Innocents: the unborn
Unborn, unwanted children are being killed all over the world—by abortion willed by mothers and their doctors and family planning advisers.

Millions are killed by the use of contraceptive pills and other kinds of medicines and devices.

Those who rationalize by claiming that the embryos or fetuses are not yet human beings are scientifically and morally wrong. For if they would only stop to consider what the moral choice must be just in case the life they are ending is that of a human being, they would realize that they must not contracept using pills and drugs that prevent the fertilized ovum from being able to cling to the mother’s womb and receive sustenance from her.

Never in its history has the Church ever condoned or approved of abortion.

There may have been speculations by theologians about when life begins or when God gives an unborn child a soul. Never has the Church accepted any theory or speculation that “ensoulment” happens later than at fertilization of the ovum by the sperm.

The teachings of the Catholic Church have been uniformly against abortion in any form (including abortion through the use of abortifacient pills and drugs). They are summarized in the latest editions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Here are some of the early Church pronouncements on the subject.

You shall not kill an unborn child or murder a newborn infant. (This is from The Didache (“The Lord’s Instruction to the Gentiles through the Twelve Apostles”).

You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not slay the child by abortion. (This is from the Epistle of Barnabas (St. Paul’s companion in apostolic visits to various cities.)

For us [Christians], murder is once and for all forbidden; so even the child in the womb, while yet the mother’s blood is still being drawn on to form the human being, it is not lawful for us to destroy. To forbid birth is only quicker murder. It makes no difference whether one takes away the life once born or destroys it as it comes to birth. He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed. (This is by Tertullian, in his Apologeticus)..

Those women who use drugs to bring about an abortion commit murder and will have to give an account to God for their abortion. (This is by Athenagoras of Athens, in a letter to Marcus Aurelius in 177, Legatio pro Christianis (“Supplication for the Christians”).

... if we would not kill off the human race born and developing according to God’s plan, then our whole lives would be lived according to nature. Women who make use of some sort of deadly abortion drug kill not only the embryo but, together with it, all human kindness. (This is by Clement of Alexandria, priest and the “Father of Theologians” (c. 150-220).

Sometimes this lustful cruelty or cruel lust goes so far as to seek to procure a baneful sterility, and if this fails the fetus conceived in the womb is in one way or another smothered or evacuated, in the desire to destroy the offspring before it has life, or if it already lives in the womb, to kill it before it is born. If both man and woman are party to such practices they are not spouses at all; and if from the first they have carried on thus they have come together not for honest wedlock, but for impure gratification; if both are not party to these deeds, I make bold to say that either the one makes herself a mistress of the husband, or the other simply the paramour of his wife.

(This is by St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430), De Nuptius et Concupiscus, “On Marriage and Concupiscence.”

The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide.

(St. Basil the Great, priest (c. 329-379), First Canonical Letter.)

Those who give drugs for procuring abortion, and those who receive poisons to kill the foetus, are subjected to the penalty for murder. (Trullian (Quinisext) Council (692), Canons, 91).