Mike Wallace once asked Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood; “Do you believe in sin — When I say believe I don’t mean believe in committing sin do you believe there is such a thing as a sin?” She responded: “I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world–that have disease from their parents, that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they’re born. That to me is the greatest sin — that people can — can commit” (Published interview 9/21/1957).
This response characterizes the whole philosophy behind the population control movement that inspires contraception and its companion issues abortion and same sex “marriage”. Once the issue is eugenics (someone else determining the possible quality of a human life), then there is no end to the length to which societies will go to prevent so-called undesirable people from being born. Time and again it has been pointed out that people who in the estimation of the majority do not have a chance to develop a good life actually have done so. A classic case in point is Blessed Margaret of Castello (1287-1320).
Margaret was born in Metola to a noble family. She was dwarfed, blind, hunchbacked and lame. Her parents were so ashamed of their daughter that they kept the little girl hidden. When this did not suffice to shield them, at the age of six, her father had her placed in a cell next to a forest chapel with no door and with only two small windows, one that allowed her to hear Mass and the other for food. Despite these handicaps, Margaret was cheerful and very intelligent, especially concerning her faith, for she was very devout. When she was sixteen, her parents took her to a shrine in Citta-di-Castello that was famed for miracles for they hoped she would be healed by a miraculous cure. When no such cure was forthcoming, they callously abandoned her in the church.
The good people of the town took her in and she opened a sort of school to support their care for her. All were impressed by her joy and trust in the love and mercy of God. The cheerfulness and her reputation for holiness led to a local convent of nuns soliciting her to enter, which she did with a glad heart. This seemed a natural application of her love and devotion for God.
Unfortunately, the religious community she entered was lax and her observance of the rule and her cheerful embrace of her lot in life became, in their minds, a reproach to their own worldliness. They, therefore, told her to leave.
These setbacks, though distressing, did not deter Margaret at all in her cheerfulness; she became a Dominican tertiary. In those times the regular third order did not live in convents. They lived at home and experienced a kind of community life with common prayer in the church and through works of mercy.
One might have thought that Margaret would become depressed at her rejection because of her physical challenges, but nothing could be further from the case. She exercised an active apostolate caring for the sick and dying and made it her special task to visit the imprisoned. The prisoners generally were astonished that this person, so deprived by nature of wholeness, could be so loving and kind and this led them to accept their own lots.
One noted exception was a man named Alonzo who was falsely accused and imprisoned. His distress was compounded by the fact that his wife and son were left destitute and the son eventually died. He was also tortured to confess, but did not and this torture left him crippled for life. When he learned that his son died of starvation, he despaired of living and would express his melancholy with rage and blasphemy. One day as Margaret visited Alonzo she fell into an ecstasy and levitated in her rapture. When this ended she implored Alonzo to repent. When he tried to blaspheme again, he found he could not and cried out: “Little Margaret, please pray for me.”
Margaret also exercised the charismatic gift of prophecy. For a time she lived with a family named Macreti. Margaret taught their sixteen-year-old daughter Francesca her religion. Margaret prophesied that both the daughter and mother would become Dominican tertiaries, which seemed impossible since the mother was not religious and the family expected the daughter to marry. As it turned out, Margaret was proven right. Signore Mancreti died and his wife only found comfort in her religion and both did become tertiaries.
Miracles attended her life and death. She was on the second floor of house which caught fire and the people were shouting to her to come down as she used to live and pray in the garret. She calmly appeared at the top of the stairs and threw her mantle down and returned to her praying with the advice the mantle should be cast on the flames. When this was done, the fire was extinguished. After her holy death, two hundred miracles were reported.
Even in death she exhibited the grace of the Lord. Her body was discovered to be incorrupt and remains so to this day after six hundred and fifty years. When it was examined after the tomb was opened it is said that they found three pearls in her heart with the images of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, perhaps fulfilling something she is said to have said often during her life: “Oh, if you only knew what I have in my heart!” One source for her life quotes Psalm 26: 10: “For my father and mother have left me; but the Lord has taken me up.”
This was the blind woman of whom many said in her lifetime it would have been better for her to die than live. Yet in her one finds a great instrument of God’s grace to our world. Margaret Sanger and the materialist, secular culture which supports her value system could only see her physical deformity and would have judged her quality of life only on that rather than on what Margaret had in her heart.
(Several internet sources were used to prepare this article as well as the engaging little book recommended for further reading: The Life of Blessed Margaret of Castello by Fr. William Bonniwell, O.P.)
Father Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, O.P. is adjunct professor at Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut. In 1966, he entered the Dominican Order and he was ordained a priest in Oakland, California in 1972. Father Mullady received his Doctorate in Sacred Theology (STD) from the Angelicum University in Rome, Italy, where served as a professor for six years. He has taught at several colleges and seminaries in the United States and is an academician of the Catholic Academy of Science, the theological consultant to the Institute on Religious Life, and the author of the Question and Answer column in Homiletic and Pastoral Review. He has been featured in several series on Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). The author of three books and numerous articles, Fr. Mullady has served as a parish priest, high school teacher, retreat master, and mission preacher.
