By Judie Brown
Lindsay Clancy’s recent trial ended as a mistrial. That stunning outcome reminded me of the age-old truth that there is a fine line between sanity and insanity. Author Julie Cantrell once said, “I know there is a thin silver line between the sane and the insane, and even in that realm of madness, there are degrees of reason, fluttering moments of clarity and truth.”
This is precisely what the Clancy trial calls to mind: those fluttering moments where humanity meets inhumanity.
While such topics can be debated ad nauseam, there is something vividly apparent in Clancy’s mistrial, and that is the horror of realizing that 11 jurors thought Clancy was free of guilt. In what sane universe is that even a thought?
Well, we may have an answer. Father Francesco Giordano opined, “Mercy does not require us to falsify evil. It can face the evil honestly while seeking the truth about the wounded freedom of the person who committed it.” It is that particular truth that, in our view, should have been at the core of the Clancy trial’s jury deliberations. And yet, it seems that evil itself was not on their menu.
Like Giordano, we believe that more than 50 years of decriminalized abortion has skewed the thinking of average people who, in many cases, do not find it merciful to accuse a mother of the cold-blooded killing of her three born children. The callous disregard for human life that has resulted from decades of violence in the womb has had many disturbing results. This latest case is the most recent example of dehumanization parading as justice and mercy.
LifeNews explains that the Clancy trial juror who would not join with the others in finding her not guilty “always felt that she was guilty, and he never displayed or said anything about reasonable doubt.” And it is that conviction that separated juror Michael P. Desronvil from the rest of the jurors and subsequently provoked unknown persons to threaten his life.
In what universe is that sanity?
Father Giordano writes that the Clancy’s children—Cora, Dawson, and Callan—“cannot speak [so] a humane society must therefore speak for them.” He continues, “Its task is neither to anticipate the verdict of a future jury nor to deny the complexity of a disordered mind. It must affirm that no diagnosis, however relevant to culpability, makes the children secondary. Their lives possessed an absolute value that did not depend upon health, ability, or another person’s will.”
The absolute value of every person’s life has meaning, regardless of politics, media, or skewed thinking. What is really required in this matter, as it is in all situations involving the dignity of the human person, is conversion to Christ, His truth, and His mercy.
Norwegian Catholic bishop Erik Varden, OCSO, once said, “A conversion is necessarily unfinished business.”
First, of course, the seeds of a sincere quest for Truth must be undertaken. And in the Clancy case, I fear that such a search was never seriously pursued. Perhaps this is because children are disposable in America. If we can rid ourselves of our progeny before they are born, why not after birth?
Or could it be that those 11 jurors who voted to find Clancy innocent believed that she was simply exercising her freedom of choice? We do not know, as we cannot read their minds, but there is one thing that we can know: If, in their deliberations, 12 jurors had seen the face of Christ, disfigured on the cross as He died for our sins, perhaps the verdict would have been unanimous.
Either way, it is not a question of sanity versus insanity that we should be concerned with but rather the conversion of heart that begins with a simple yes to surrendering to the Lord. We pray that such a miracle occurs in the hearts of every person, especially those reflecting on the value of the children who died at the hands of their mother.
Father Giordano concurs, writing, “A civilization is measured by the place it gives those who have no voice. If we wish to rebuild a culture of life, we should begin again with three names: Cora, Dawson, and Callan. Justice and mercy, when genuine, forget no one.”