Fr. Damien Continues to Inspire

There are no Christopher Hitchens Leper Colonies or Richard Dawkins Charities. In a Darwinian world, concern for the weak and sick doesn’t tend to reach the top of the To Do list. No, that doesn’t mean “All atheists are immoral”. But it does mean that ideas have consequences and if you groom a whole population to think “If they be like to die they had better do it and help decrease the surplus population” what you will get is a population that, on the whole, thinks that way and does not regard helping the weak or the sick as particularly worthy of attention. Hitchens himself is quite clear about how the gleaming efficient atheist state of the future should treat undesirables. Even P.Z. Myers is appalled by Hitchens’ zeal for “putting a bullet through every God-haunted brain”.

Religious cultures that say “Give alms, even when it seems like a waste of time” or “Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these…” or “The Lord is the Defender of the Alien, Orphan, and Widow” are a challenge to much of the Darwinian narrative as it is voice by Planned Parenthood (“Inconvenient, expensive or physically disabled? Kill it!”). Atheism tends to create cultures that view charity as a waste of time or, at best, a calculated investment. God help those who do not promise a good return on the investment. Rationalism dictates their extermination.

Fr. Damien, who cannot be explained by the little systems of order created by Ditchkins, shows us another way.