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Where Bullying Begins

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Deacon Keith A Fournier
(c) Third Millennium, LLC

I opened my diocesan newspaper first thing this morning. There was an insightful article by the new editor of the Catholic Virginian on the horrible problem of bullying. It was morning, and like millions of other Americans, with the wonderful aroma of coffee filling my nose, I read this well written piece but actually enjoyed the coffee much more!

After I finished the cup, I could not but stop to reflect on this allegedly "new"problem of bullying. It is not new. It seems that this "new" discovery is actually an increase in an acknowledgement of an increase in bullying. Why? Well, could it have anything to do with the growing influence of what the Holy father has rightly called a "culture of death"? Absolutely!

The concern over bullying is legitimate. I appreciate the article. But, in some circles, it has become the darling project of a liberalism impaled on its own political lance. Oh, this author did a great job. He is my friend and he is not an ideologue. But, I have read the articles on "bullying" over the last few years. Why has it seemingly increased? Could there be a connection between abortion and bullying?

We ask you, humbly, to help.

Duh!

After years in control of the public discussion, the contemporary mishmash that calls itself "liberal", the ideology that demoralized our public life, has left its adherents scrambling to blame one more outside cause for the moral corruption of our nation. Instead they should look at their own failed self centered political philosophy.

Here is the real culprit, we have lost the sense of the dignity of every human person as an irrepeatable gift from God. People are now objects of use, property not persons.This is not confined to liberalism. The conservative movement, flirting with libertarianism, has the same root problem.

Oh, I know bullying is very real ...and I know it is on the increase! I have raised (not quite through---though are you ever finished?) five children. What bothers me most about this seemingly "new" discovery of this age-old problem is that the remedies being bandied about by so called "experts" may simply compound the problem. It is kind of like taking an antibiotic when you have a virus. It not only doesn't always work, it may actually worsen the underlying problem.

The standard hue and cry for federal dollars to develop a federal program to stamp out this increase in violence through an outside-in fix is questionable. It probably will not work. Bullies are bred. Bullying is a symptom and not a disease.

Seems to me we need to truly wake up and smell the coffee.

In 1994, at a National Prayer Breakfast, in the presence of the then "bully in chief", President Clinton, that little sign of contradiction, God rest her soul, Mother Theresa, hit the nail on the head. Speaking at a podium her small stature could barely be seen over she spoke these words:

"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child - a direct killing of the innocent child - murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion?

As always, we must persuade her with love, and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even his life to love us. So the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love - that is, to give until it hurts... her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

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By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.

And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion".

It simply cannot get any clearer than that. Bullying begins in the womb! These days, the most vulnerable are its first victims. There, in the first home, the first sanctuary of the womb, children are brutally bullied by those more powerful than they. They cannot even be heard in their resistance.

Is it any wonder that the people who never even got to know them have followed the example of a culture that calls this first act of bullying a constitutional right?

God have mercy on us all.

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Deacon Fournier is one of the founders of the Your Catholic Voice Movement and serves as the President of the Your Catholic Voice Foundation

Your Catholic Voice is a movement to promote faithful citizenship based on the fundamental truths of the Catholic Church relating to Life, Family, Freedom and Solidarity. For information go to Your Catholic Voice http://www.yourcatholicvoice.org