The Connection Between The Commandments
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - January 19, 2007
Two weeks before Christmas, for ignominious reasons, New Bedford became the center of attention for most in the state and for many across the nation. At 2 o'clock in the morning on December 12th, 35-year old Scott Medeiros burst into the Foxy Lady Strip Club on Pope's Island with an assault rifle. He proceeded to kill 33-year old bouncer Robert Carreiro and 30-year old manager Tory Marandos. He wounded four others, including two police officers, before he took his own life. The motive for his rampage seemed to be revenge against Marandos and Carreiro, who had kicked him out of the club for harassing his ex-girlfriend, club bartender Jamie Tavares, who, before dating Medeiros, had had a relationship and a child with Carreiro.
The initial reaction was, well, surreal. The Foxy Lady became a make-shift shrine. Under the slimy shadow of the silhouetted stripper on the club's street sign, votive candles featuring the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe — on whose feast day the violence occurred — were placed. If ever there was a contrast between two ladies, there it was!
In press interviews, Carreiro's friends compared him publicly and favorably to Mother Teresa and approvingly mentioned he was the product of New Bedford Catholic schools. Marandos' uncle, club owner Tom Tsoumas, called him one of the best people one could meet and proudly spoke of how good an altar boy he was at his Greek Orthodox Church in Nashua. Those who knew Medeiros heaped accolades on him, too, and professed their incomprehension of how he could have done what he did. Listening to the praise, one might have thought for a moment that the senseless violence had occurred against volunteers at a food pantry run by the Missionaries of Charity rather than at a strip club that makes money off of objectifying women, perverting men and poisoning souls.
The club changed the words on their street sign to wish Carreiro and Marandos "God-speed," while at the same time speedily tried to re-open for business. They needed to be persuaded by the police chief to mourn a little longer. Not even the murder of its manager and bouncer, however, could rob the club of its distinctive spirit. In the days of mourning leading up to its reopening, it ran advertisements in the daily newspaper that said it all: "XXXmas Party! … Join us here for the best XXXmas Party around! … Get into the holiday spirit and spread a little Yule tide joy!!… Come and join Santa's naughty helpers!"
Public officials wanted and obviously needed to condemn what had occurred, but spent most of their breath focusing on the need to ban assault weapons. Few politicians were politically incorrect enough to state the obvious: that, however tragic and unanticipated the murders, should we really be surprised that evil acts rather than good ones emanate from a strip club?
Simply stated, breaking the sixth commandment greases the slide toward breaking the fifth. Perhaps the most famous illustration of this connection happened in the life of King David. He first lost custody of his eyes as he caught sight of the naked Bathsheba. Then he lost custody of his heart and lusted after her. Then he summoned her and committed adultery with her. After finding out she had conceived, he attempted to conceal his crime by deceiving her just husband. He called Uriah home from battle, got him drunk and tried to cajole him into having relations with her. When that failed, the king wrote the order to have his army abandon Uriah on the front lines so that he might be slain. David's sexual sins led to his deception and then, most tragically, to having a just man killed.
The connection between sex, lies and crime-scene tape occurs with shocking frequency, as domestic violence advocates attest. Settings that elicit and celebrate sins against the sixth commandment make it more likely rather than less that other sins, including sins against the fifth, will flow. Stoking the fires of lust can eventually lead to fires burning out of control.
If we wish as a culture to learn from terrible tragedies like what happened on Pope's Island in December, we must candidly look at the causes and seek to eliminate them.
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This connection between breaking the sixth commandment and breaking the fifth is seen readily in the horrible tragedy of abortion. Almost every abortion flows from a previous sexual sin, such as premarital sex among teenagers leading to unwanted pregnancies, or contraceptive sex among married or unmarried adults in which their anti-child attitude simply adopts a more lethal form. Sins against the sixth commandment and sins against the fifth are, as Pope John Paul II once said, fruits of the same tree.
As we prepare to mark on Monday the dreadful 34th anniversary of Roe versus Wade that legalized abortion in our country, we would do well to ponder what the real Mother Teresa said in 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast. This Faithful Lady described not only the link between sexual sins and abortion, but between the violence of abortion and other types of savagery, like the deplorable December bloodshed in New Bedford:
"The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child — a direct killing of the innocent child — murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? … By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. … Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want."
We reap what we sow. Therefore we have to be very vigilant about the seeds we plant.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
