It is something of an emotional and physical shock to have seen the vast and vitriolic coverage of the story of little Madeleine McCann who was snatched from her parents holiday appartment in Portugal in May.
This heartrending tale turned from a search for a little girl who was taken whilst sleeping, to an unmitigated assault on her parents, right to the point where they are now being accused of murdering her themselves, hiding the body and then disposing of her in an unknown grave.
It is virtually impossible to deal with the kind of accusations which are being made in some of the British press. They are so off the wall, so uniformed and so without reason. Newsagents shelves everywhere have turned into Little Shops of Horror as the ensuing debacle goes on. Instead of having to avert ones eyes from the usual steady stream of visual filth regularly on display, one is reeling at the latest concoction of rumour and calumny presented as a news story and coupled with a photograph of the hounded and fractured Mrs McCann.
For the record, I do not believe for one instant that the McCanns had anything to do with the disappearance of their child. It is beyond reason to suggest otherwise. As a criminal lawyer, I can see plainly that the so called “evidence” amounts to nothing (even this is just rumour of evidence and not fact). Forensic evidence does not provide conclusions or solutions, this is left to the reasoning process of the human mind. To be frank they wouldn’t even be able to frame an innocent Irish man with what they (dont) have against the McCanns.
We lawyers all know of the failings of DNA evidence. A weakness that the press seems determined to ignore. I can remember being addressed by Crown Counsel whilst still a Law student at Grey’s Inn and being told a gruesome story of a case of murder which he had successfully prosecuted on forensic evidence, and which at the time had seemed conclusive, but on appeal had proved fatally flawed. He thought it imperative that we always question this sort of evidence. That was a salutory lesson I learned 17 years ago. It was a lesson which came back to haunt me when a similar thing happened in my own practice. The forensic lab “mixed up” samples effectively putting an innocent man at the scene. Fortunately in this case the mistake was discovered before the man was convicted, but unfortunatley not before he had suffered untold mental anguish.
Human error. It’s everywhere. In fact human error is all that is left when God is taken out of the equation. That is what we are left with the flailing minds of the liberal academics. In turn, the acrobatic contortions of reason, for which modern man is so well known, climaxes in a terrible parody of unreason manifested by some in the media.
If Shakespeare said “life is a stage” then this is an arena. The McCanns are, quite literally, the Christians. The press the lions. The public the jeering, hysterical crowd and the madhatters of the editorial world perch like little Caesers drunkenly signaling, “thumbs up” no, wait “thumbs down!”
Of course, there was always a little section of the media prone to crazy speculation, but now it is widespread. Posing as the intellectuals of our day these pundits espouse the news and views with an air of thoughtfulness, and yet their minds must literally be stewed. They cannot follow a single thought through to its natural end. They have no understanding of history or of the nature of man. They have, in short, no faculty for reason. This is because the ability to reason is a grace. Grace comes from God. They cannot have what they have rejected, and it shows.
Chesterton said, “The man who loves his own children is much more universal, is much more fully in the general order, than the man who dandles the infant hippopotomus or puts the young crocodile in the perambulator.” The McCanns are normal, their love for their children is rational and reasonable. Their actions make sense. The media, the mirror of our corrupt society, is absurd. It’s actions are erratic and senseless. It is a monster out of control, wheeling its monstrous offspring around in a perambulator.
How often do we hear them weep from the TV about a lost elephant or, recently in Ireland, about 400 “small animals and insects” that died in an overheated car? Cruelty! Cruelty and terror for stick insects! And yet, you and I are walking around petrified for our children because we don’t know where the next paedophile might be lurking, or the next neglected and crazed adolescent with his own gun.
And of course there is always this paranoia. This feeling that if you shout at your child, or if you stop your child from running out into traffic by smacking them, or if you fall short of this “unknown standard” in some way you might end up in prison.
The McCann story is the epitome of all these fears together. The McCann story is frightening. It frightens me, and if you are rational, it frightens you. Because all the McCann parents did was to love their child and go to the ends of the earth to find her. Unfortunately, as it now seems for them, there was an “appetite” for their story. Now this has turned into an appetite for them.
Society is sickening for something. We live in a wretched time where God is being rejected. We are losing our children and so, we are losing our minds.
The pack turns on the McCanns because they remind us of our worst nightmare. Meanwhile the rest of us, who have no “appetite” for this frenzy, can pray that the McCanns find their little girl and the world finally leaves them alone.
Jesus said on his walk to Golgotha, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me; but weep for yourself and your children. For behold the days shall come, wherein they will say: blesssed are the barren and the wombs that have not borne…..”
Dear St Joan Of Arc Pray For Us.
This is the last portrait of the Madonna and Child acomplished by Bellini. This subject was his particular favourite as can be seen in the tenderness apparent from the painting.
