{"id":2569,"date":"2013-01-07T01:00:55","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T05:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?p=2569"},"modified":"2013-01-07T11:19:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T15:19:40","slug":"massacre-of-innocents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/01\/massacre-of-innocents\/","title":{"rendered":"Massacre of Innocents"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>The senseless tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut prior to Christmas continues to haunt me.\u00a0 We have had school shootings in this country before, to be sure, but the age of the victims puts this case, in my mind at least, in a category by itself. Too bad for public discourse that the \u201clesson\u201d of this tragedy quickly became a bone of contention between those who want to limit gun rights and those who think \u201cmental health issues\u201d and our culture of violence bear the blame. \u00a0Am I wrong when I say that most sensible people believe that this is an all-of-the-above no-brainer: some restrictions on military-grade weapons and <\/em>attention to mental health questions and<\/em> criticism of our violent popular culture should be part of any solution?<\/p>\n

Americans are a pragmatic people, so perhaps they should not be blamed too harshly for immediately conceiving of the tragedy as a \u201cproblem\u201d that needs a \u201csolution.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, I applaud this mind-set; it\u2019s a feature of American culture that distinguishes it from many others where quiet resignation to the wheel of fortune reigns supreme.<\/p>\n

At the same time, one can be forgiven for wishing there was more room in our culture to air the metaphysical, even theological, questions\u2014the blaring, imponderable \u201cwhys\u201d\u2013that such violence invokes. \u00a0But perhaps this is a burden public discourse cannot bear.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m on firmer ground in looking to the Church for assistance.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, this year I\u2019ve paid more attention to the Feast of Holy Innocents than I have in the past.\u00a0 For liturgical churches, this feast day has traditionally taken place between Christmas and Epiphany; today is it customarily celebrated on December 28. The feast day arose to commemorate the infants in Bethlehem whom Herod slew (as recorded in Matthew 2) when in \u201cfurious rage\u201d he realized that he had been misled by the Wisemen.\u00a0\u00a0 Several traditions consider these slain children to be the first Christian martyrs.\u00a0 As Augustine wrote: \u201cThese then, whom Herod\u2019s cruelly tore as sucklings from their mothers\u2019 bosom, are justly hailed as \u2018infant martyr flowers\u2019; they were the Church\u2019s first blossoms, matured by the frost of persecution during the cold winter of unbelief.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The feast day first appears in the Western church in the Leonine Sacramentary<\/a>, dating from ca. 485; it became a fixed day in the liturgical calendar only during the Middle Ages. \u00a0Its place there aided it in becoming a recurrent theme in musical and artistic expression. One example is the so-called \u201cCoventry Christmas Carol,\u201d<\/a> the haunting lyrics of which represent a mother\u2019s lament for her doomed child.\u00a0 With numerous, anonymous medieval predecessors, early-modern painters such as Guido Reni, Pieter Bruegel, Peter Paul Rubens, and Cornelius von Haarlem took up the theme.<\/p>\n

Depictions of the massacre vary in content and style, but a common motif shows Herod, ensconced in the arrogance of political power, on one side of the painting, separated from a throng of powerless, weeping women on the other.\u00a0 Between them, one sees a jumbled scene of dead and dying babies and their obedient executioners.<\/p>\n

Neither the liturgy of the Holy Innocents nor artistic depictions of the theme attempt to \u201csolve\u201d the raw experience of tragedy\u2013even as it is certainly to be understood as taking place within the larger Salvation Story. \u00a0Arguably, both liturgy and art intensify the feeling of anguish. They call a spade a spade: \u201cLook hard,\u201d they say, \u201cat the dead children; this is unimaginable, gut-wrenching sorrow.\u201d\u00a0 But in doing so, they make us realize that there are regions of human experience that transcend the political, the practical\u2014regions that cannot be fixed, and only beckon, plaintively and even angrily, for a theological response.\u00a0 They escort us from the op-ed realm of the remediable to the numinous realm of the why.<\/p>\n

Remedies and political solutions of all sorts, of course, should be sought out after events like the Newtown shooting.\u00a0 As seekers of Shalom<\/em>, Christians should be at the very forefront in proposing them.\u00a0 But we should also remember that our humanity is compromised when we ignore or subsume the theological into the political alone.\u00a0 The Feast of Holy Innocents and artistic renderings of the theme provide a supra-political \u201cspace\u201d for us to ponder\u2014simply ponder\u2014unspeakable sorrow and our most vexing questions.\u00a0 They do so most compellingly when they are faithful to the biblical text, as when the Gospel of Matthew reaches back to the book of Jeremiah, and offers us only these sparse, disconsolate words:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

A voice was heard in Ramah<\/p>\n

Wailing and loud lamentation<\/p>\n

Rachel weeping for her children;<\/p>\n

She refused to be consoled,<\/p>\n

Because they were no more.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The senseless tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut prior to Christmas continues to haunt me.\u00a0 We have had school shootings in this country before, to be sure, but the age of the victims puts this case, in my mind at least, in a category by itself. Too bad for public discourse that the \u201clesson\u201d of this tragedy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1189,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[572],"class_list":["post-2569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-newtown-holy-innocents"],"yoast_head":"\nMassacre of Innocents<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The senseless tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut prior to Christmas continues to haunt me.\u00a0 We have had school shootings in this country before, to be sure,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/01\/massacre-of-innocents\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Massacre of Innocents\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The senseless tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut prior to Christmas continues to haunt me.\u00a0 We have had school shootings in this country before, to be sure,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/01\/massacre-of-innocents\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Anxious Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-07T05:00:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-01-07T15:19:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/files\/2013\/01\/HolyInnocents-300x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Thomas Albert Howard\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Thomas Albert Howard\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/01\/massacre-of-innocents\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/01\/massacre-of-innocents\/\",\"name\":\"Massacre of Innocents\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-01-07T05:00:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-01-07T15:19:40+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/fc69e5b65a13ea30a509aff04ab68c24\"},\"description\":\"The senseless tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut prior to Christmas continues to haunt me.\u00a0 We have had school shootings in this country before, to be sure,\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/01\/massacre-of-innocents\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/01\/massacre-of-innocents\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2013\/01\/massacre-of-innocents\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Massacre of Innocents\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/\",\"name\":\"Anxious Bench\",\"description\":\"The Relevance of Religious History for Today\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/fc69e5b65a13ea30a509aff04ab68c24\",\"name\":\"Thomas Albert Howard\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9f6ab4fc83ab6e12341cf551c3446b78?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9f6ab4fc83ab6e12341cf551c3446b78?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Thomas Albert Howard\"},\"description\":\"Thomas Albert (Tal) Howard is Professor of Humanities and History in Christ College, the honors of college of Valparaiso University, where he holds the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics. 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