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For the Children who Drowned in the Rio Grande

For the Children who Drowned in the Rio Grande

Last updated on: January 15, 2024 at 10:17 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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For the Children who Drowned in the Rio Grande 2024-01-15T22:17:57-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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I don’t know how to tell you that it’s wrong to kill children.

If you can’t understand that children in danger have to be rescued, whether they’re supposed to be where they are or not, I think you are beyond hope.

I would like to think that people who call themselves “pro-life” would understand this completely, but we all know this is not the case.

This is just to say that two children and an adult woman drowned in the Rio Grande over the weekend.

Border Patrol was trying to save them. Lord knows I don’t usually have a single nice thing to say about the United States Border Patrol. But in this case, they were trying to get to a group of migrants who were struggling in the Rio Grande. The Texas National Guard refused to let them near. They physically blocked them. They have been blocking Border Patrol from doing their duty for days, standing on federal land where it’s illegal for them to block access, because Governor Abbot, who is a pro-life Catholic, wants to show off. He wants to make a big performance of being cruel to migrants. This will earn him acclaim and votes from pro-life Christians who love the Bible.

I don’t know how to explain how wrong this is, if you can’t already see it.

I don’t know for what purpose those migrants were trying to get to our country. Maybe they were desperately seeking asylum, which is legal. Maybe they were criminals trying to smuggle drugs or other dangerous things. I know that the children weren’t criminals. They didn’t get there by themselves; they were brought there by the adults, for good or for evil purposes. For all we know they were kidnapped. The children didn’t have any choice about whether they were crossing the Rio Grande, in January, in the desert which gets chilly at night. The river was so cold that one of the migrants in their party was hospitalized for hypothermia. That was the last sensation those children ever had: being swept away by an agonizingly cold river, unable to breathe, while the Texas National Guard barred Border Patrol from getting them out.

What if they were your children?

What if your children drowned in frigid water a long way from home, and you found out that somebody else had physically blocked people from rescuing them, in defiance of federal law?

What if you were told that the reason your children were dead was that a pro-life Catholic wanted to look tough and important to the party which claims it represents life and Christianity?

How would you feel if you found out that he did it just to show off how much he hated your children, so that he’d look tough to other pro-life Christians? I would in an agony of grief, and I would be furious.

I am furious, and you should be as well.

I’m furious because I am a Christian, and because I am an American, and because I’m a mother, and because I’m a human being, and every human being should be furious.

To hell with the pro-life movement.

To hell with American Christianity.

To hell with anyone who would do something so transparently evil, in order to curry favor with false Christians, and to hell with the false Christians as well. There is nothing of Christ in American Christianity. American Christianity is anti-Christ.

May the souls of those poor migrants, by the mercy of God, rest in peace.

May we harness this anger to rescue our country from those who commit murder to please performative Christians.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

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