Where are Today's lepers?

In this Sunday's gospel (6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B), Jesus heals a leper. Who are today's lepers?

The so-called "modern" world is characterized by a kind of blindness in which what exists is seen as as imperfections of an ideal, which is only the true "real." Examples: a "true" democracy is one in which each person has an "equal" vote. A "real" woman is the beauty I see in a glossy magazine. A true line is perfectly straight. A ring is 'really" a circle. "[S]omehow the 'reality' of the ring seems to be the circle, and the 'reality' of the coal-burning locomotive seems to be the ideally efficient steam engine." Sokolowski, "Exact Science and the World," p. 159 in Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions.

The purpose of this kind of looking is to see the world with more precision, which enhances our ability of technological manipulation and control. As Harvey C. Mansfield observes, "For human purposes nature needs to be supplied with more exactness than it has by itself." (quoted in Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person, p. 113.)

The result is that the flesh and blood world we experience is turned into an "apparent" world, less real than the "scientific" world of ideal objects. "The mind that is fascinated by exact essences and oblivious of how they have come about considers the appearances in the lived world as merely subjective views which are to be discounted in a final description of what is and of how things are." Sokolowski, "Exact Science and the World," op. cit. at p. 161. The subjective is "just your opinion," and can be sloughed off, rationalized away, since it isn't "really real."

I thought of this in reading about a talk given by Mary O'Callaghan, who has five children, the youngest a down syndrome child. She observed that 90 percent of Down syndrome children are now aborted, as a result of more generally available pre-natal screening. Yet, she observes, we are doing nothing to "cure or prevent Down syndrome" by eliminating babies with the disorder. They will continue to be conceived. This is a dirty little secret of a eugenics mindset.

Ms. O'Callaghan counsels that "Parents should be assisted to see their unborn children as children, rather than the list of symptoms which doctors often present today without offering treatment. The informational materials that doctors give with this diagnosis should include pictures and stories of children with various difficult diagnoses within a familial context." She called this a "radical approach" to prenatal diagnosis, centered on showing parents and doctors the humanity of the unborn child, regardless of disability."

"In the context of a loving family," she said, "You would not see a child with a life-altering illness. Instead, you would see a child with breathtaking beauty, surrounded by love." Quoted from p. 11 of Ethics and Culture, Winter 2012 bulletin.

A Down Syndrome baby, one of today's lepers, is a victim of our blindness to what is real. We "see" such a baby as "defective," better off dead, because we imagine that a "real" baby is a bouncing baby boy, an "ideal" specimen, living in an ideal family, etc. Thus we rationalize abortion. We need the treatment suggested by Dr. O'Callaghan to remove our cataracts. The baby in the womb is the real one, not our idea of a perfect baby. Ultimately, as she says, it takes love to accomplish this, surrounding the other with love. It is not technology that will save us, but love. Love sees the leper as one of us, and we "heal" him by including him in our family.

Listen to Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely"