What we say of the heart reveals something of the essence of the person. For example, when we say that someone has a heart of gold, this does not mean that the chemical symbol of the said muscle in the chest is Au. It’s a figure of speech: the said person is loving, helpful, and so on. And when we say that someone has a heart of stone, it does not mean that the muscle pumping the blood is made of granite; it signifies a person of a singular baseness: merciless, cruel, vindictive, and so forth. And somebody else could be faint-hearted. But what does it mean for someone to have a sacred heart? The quintessential exemplar is, of course, Jesus, who is given the title The Sacred Heart; the feast is on June 27.
Any page of the gospels will provide abundant evidence as to what constituted his sacred heart: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, denouncing hypocrisy, forgiving sinners, and so forth. The aspect of his sacred heart which is highlighted in this year’s readings is his care for the sheep of his flock—he being the Good Shepherd. He tends to the whole flock, but has a special care for the weaker ones, the hapless ones who stray, the ones with nobody else to defend them. The crook of the shepherd was not just a fancy walking stick, but a weapon to be used in protecting the sheep from predators.
Who are the ones in our societies who need protecting, who are the targets of merciless predators? Top of the list are the babies in their mother’s wombs. Utterly defenceless, they are sitting targets.
The House of Commons in London voted 379-137 to remove criminal sanctions for women having their own abortion in England and Wales. This vote was in June of 2025. Those who voted in favour of the bill have descended to a level of barbarity unknown to earlier civilisations, because we now know irrefutably that the foetus responds to stimulus, reacts to dangers and pressures: we can see all this on images and videos, evidence unavailable in earlier eras. Yet people still want to murder these innocents. If we really had sacred hearts, we would do all in our power to protect these defenceless ones. I would designate those who voted for the bill as either “heartless” or as having “hearts of stone”: bereft of any sense of mercy or pity, blind to the worth of every single life, especially the defenceless babe in the womb. Former U.S. Surgeon General, Everett Koop remarked how utterly self-contradictory it is that all those shouting and campaigning for abortion have themselves already been born.
Now it has been revealed that here in Ireland, since February 2019, up to 50,000 babies in the womb have been murdered. Even more horrifically, 12 babies who were born after botched abortions died soon afterwards. We have reached a new diabolical level of depravity. To tear these entirely innocent and defenceless babies from their mother’s wombs: what worse barbarism could be imagined? Those who have participated in these murderous acts are all accomplices in the killing of innocent children. They no longer share the heritage of Ireland as “the land of saints and scholars.” No, for them it is “the land of savages and psychopaths.”
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