Down Syndrome and the Gift of Innocence

Down Syndrome and the Gift of Innocence

By William McGurn  

Wall Street Journal 

Christmas Eve 2019 

Innocence isn’t much prized these days. Yet at Christmas it’s impossible to escape: The splendor of the music, the warm visions of hearth and home, the whole wonder of the season—all rest on the joy brought a weary world by innocence made incarnate. 

Even those of us who lost our innocence long ago sometimes look back wistfully on Christmases past, when as children we believed not only in Santa but in the loving world that went with him: safe, caring, kind. For most of us, this never rises above sentiment or nostalgia. 

But what if someone decided innocence was worth holding onto and built a whole way of life around it?

It might look like the lives led by a small group of contemplative nuns in the French countryside just outside Le Blanc. These are the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb, and among religious orders they enjoy a singular distinction: They exist so that “those who are in last place in the world”—women with Down syndrome—can “hold in the church the exceptional role of spouses of Christ.”

In practice this means that able-bodied sisters devote their lives to ensuring their fellow sisters with Down syndrome can live their vocations. Living with Down syndrome is not all sweetness and light, even among nuns. The difference is that these women take this innocence, leaven the difficult and imperfect parts with love, and gift it back to the world in more sublime form through both prayer and example. 

The order was founded in 1985 with a community of two: Mother Line, now prioress, and Sister Véronique, who felt a vocation but could not find an order to accept her because she has Down syndrome. Today there are 10 sisters, eight with Down syndrome. 

“The smiling faces of our little sisters with Down syndrome are a great message of hope for many injured families,” Mother Line tells me. “Our smallness will also say that we are made for very great things: to love and to be loved.” She particularly asks for prayers that able-bodied “young American girls” might consider life among her flock. 

A Christmas confession: I’m a sucker for those Facebook videos showing some basketball team letting the boy with Down syndrome shoot until he sinks a basket, or photos of a high-school senior with Down beaming because her classmates have elected her prom queen. Even the most jaded—maybe especially the most jaded—recognizes, and perhaps even envies, the special joy reserved for the pure of heart. 

Then you pull back and look at the faces of those cheering these things on—the fans at the basketball game, the other couples at the prom. Is their happiness any less? Not to mention the inner rejoicing of a tired mom who has just watched a crowd of people look at her child and see what she sees: a beautiful and unique human being who is a source of delight. 

This is the everyday witness of the Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb. In the world outside their walls, innocence can be dismissed as childish ignorance or dangerous naiveté. Inside, the nuns choose to cherish and exalt innocence—and the unconditional love and trust that comes with it—as an example of how we are meant to live with one another. 

In Morris West’s novel The Clowns of God, Christ returns to earth, where people have trouble recognizing him. At one point he goes to a school for children with Down syndrome, and picks up a little girl.

“I know what you are thinking,” Jesus says. “You need a sign. What better one could I give but to make this little one whole and new? I could do it, but I will not...I gave this mite a gift I denied to all of you—eternal innocence. To you she looks imperfect—but to me she is flawless...” 

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

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For further research:

https://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-real-neo-nazis.html

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Chronicles of Kosher Conservatism, 7/18/15

Mr. Rothstein

Rothstein: Kosher Conservative Mole

By Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org

Edward Rothstein is a public intellectual whose oracular writings are found throughout the canonical journalism of the American Establishment: the New York Times, Wall Street Journal (where he is “critic at large”), New Republic, New York Review of Books.

Mr. Rothstein is a mole within the “Conservative” movement. He cuts an impressive figure in decrying the process whereby the West engages in "...confessions of guilt, gestures to make recompense, and shamefaced withdrawal from the exercise of power and self-interest. Such a perspective, though, is deeply flawed. Imperial desires, slavery and exploitation have been hallmarks of every powerful culture and are hardly unique to the West (more unique, in fact, is the West’s abolition of slavery).”

All well and good you say. But in the same essay from which we excerpted the preceding (Wall Street Journal, July 18, p. C-7), we find this omission-laden revelation of the sort of “Conservatism” Rothstein is supposed to represent. He writes:

"...the far-flung explorations that characterized early modern Europe were not undertaken just to attain power and riches; they reflected a desire to illuminate the unknown, to comprehend the universe and map its qualities, to discover not just novelties but fundamental principles. They involved a kind of nervy geographic universalism.” 

Let us endeavor to learn from this sage. According to Rothstein, European business, colonies, exploration and military power were projected around the world in order to:

• Attain power and riches

• Illuminate the unknown

• Comprehend the universe and map its qualities

• Discover ….fundamental principles

• Undertake geographic universalism 

Mr. Rothstein has included everything but the kitchen sink in his list of motivations for why Europeans extended their influence and power across the globe. This falsified version of history is the emerging status quo in the campaign to put forth a deracinated, sterile, secular distortion of our heritage which passes for history these days and which has absolutely nothing to do with Conservatism. 

Dare we say it? Rothstein wields a Judaic airbrush as he refuses to attest to the great Christian missionary mandate as the overwhelming primary motivation for western European exploration from the Middle Ages into the late 19th century. 

Rothstein can’t bring himself to credit Christianity’s mission to bring the Gospel to the heathen as playing any significant part in Europe’s global “exploration.” Cortes conquered Mexico for reasons of “geographic universalism.” The Puritans settled New England to “discover…fundamental principles” (not having any “principles" of their own).  The Jesuits opened up China, Japan and India to “attain power and riches.” The Boers settled southern Africa “to illuminate the unknown.”

Rothstein is an agnostic when it comes to Christian evangelism, the main motive for European exploration, and with the commissar-like authority invested in him by the Establishment press, he simply eliminates the rich history of our heritage. The resulting vacuum is presented to the trusting kiddies who are eager to imbibe muscular, red meat Conservatism as an antidote to the detractors of our western civilization. But how can a detractor like Mr. Rothstein serve as an antidote to detraction? 

Michael Hoffman is at the author of Judaism Discovered, They Were White and They Were Slaves, The Great Holocaust Trial, Usury in Christendom and four other books of history and literature. His columns are funded by donations from readers.

Copyright©2015. All Rights Reserved.

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Israeli false flag/black op in Bulgarian terror attack?

By Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org

Here below we reprint a photocopy of a letter from the Iranians last February warning of Israeli black op/ false flag operations. 

At that time it appeared as though Mossad was active in the Far East in attacks on Israelis which were then blamed on Iran by our compliant media. For some reason the Israelis almost always instantly know, a few minutes after an attack, that Iran or its "proxies" are the guilty ones. With clairvoyant police work like that, you'd think they would be able to actually stop the perpetrators, instead of just knowing who they are almost immediately after they commit the crime. 

Now, on the anniversary of alleged Iranian attacks decades ago in Argentina, Israeli tourists have been killed in Bulgaria. Cui bono?

Observe that the important statement from Iran reproduced below had to be published in The Wall Street Journal as a letter to the editor, rather than a news report. 

Notice also that today the terror bombing of high level Syrian officials (possibly with the assistance of the CIA) is not described as a terror attack by the American media. 

"Beware of falling into another Israeli trap"

Letter to the Editor, The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 22, 2012, p. A14 

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The Hoffman Wire is funded by sales of our publications and donations from readers.

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Wall Street Journal reporting on Iran Omits Important Facts

Dear Farnaz Fassihi

re: "Iran opponents said to be jailed" (Wall Street Journal, March 1)

In your article in the Wall Street Journal on the arrest of Iranian opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, why didn't you elaborate on charges by pro-government forces that the dissidents are agents of, or at the very least, used by American and Israeli Zionism?

Surely you are aware that the overthrow of the Iranian government is a high priority in Jerusalem and Washington, and that both George W. Bush and Obama have authorized CIA covert operations inside Iran, as well as the fact that the Iran government is being targeted by terrorists. For example, Iranian scientist Majid Shahriari was killed by a bomb and a second scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, was seriously injured in Tehran on Nov. 29. Dr. Abbasi's wife was also killed in the bombing.

None of these facts are mentioned in your reporting.

By omission, you give the false impression that Iran is secure from foreign subversion and terror and that the whole controversy is an internal matter.

Sincerely, 

Michael Hoffman

For Further Research:

Terrorist Bomb Attack on Iranian Scientists:

http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2010/11/terrorist-bomb-attack-on-iranian.html

Media continues its Amnesia over Terrorist Bomb Attack:

http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2010/12/media-continues-its-amnesia-over.html

National Public Radio (NPR) Propaganda System Against Iran:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bf-FAhIkE0

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