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 In his article "The Edgardo Mortara Case," Rod Dreher writes - "I am, frankly, shocked to read an essay defending the Vatican’s 1858 kidnapping of the Jewish child Edgardo Mortara from his parents — but here it is, in First Things, from the pen of Father Romanus Cessario, a Dominican priest and theologian. "The Edgardo Mortara case shocks the modern conscience. The Mortaras were a Jewish family living in Bologna, which was then a city of the Papal States. When the baby Edgardo fell ill, and was thought to be near death, the family’s Catholic housekeeper secretly baptized him. He recovered. Five years later, when the boy was six years old, the Church learned that Edgardo was a baptized Catholic … and sent a Dominican priest, the local inquisitor, to investigate. Result: carabinieri took the child from his mother and father’s home, and delivered him to the Church." Dreher calls this act a "kidnapping" and compares it to the United States, Canada, and Australia taking the children of "uncivilized" native peoples to raise them in church-sponsored institutions as "civilzed Christians." The same can be said of Muslims taking the children of conquered Christians to raise them as Janissaries who would fight to the death for the Sultan and for Islam. What about modern "Child Protective Services" revoking parental rights and taking away children because the parents homeschool them or the parents are Jehovah's Witnesses or Christian Scientists who don't believe in certain medical procedures? Or Orthodox Christian parents who object to their child identifying as transgender and demanding to be called by ze politically correct pronoun? Does the state's ideology ever trump parental rights, and if so, in which cases? Get the whole story: read the full article & get our free weekly newsletter: subscribe below! |