During my sabbatical visit to Italy, I looked at the Art with awe and wonder as paintings in Cathedrals and Churches of Rome, Florence, Venice, Siena, Padua, and Milan leaped beyond memories forged in college Art History classes and visits to New York, Chicago, and Boston museums. Old and New Testament stories artistically retold by Giotto, Bellini, Reni, Michelangelo, Raphael, Tintoretto, and Parmigianino were magnificent. However, back in Newton, one story unfortunately stayed with me: The Massacre of the Innocents.

Told by Matthew, this is the story of Herod’s soldiers who go to Bethlehem to slaughter children. Perhaps influenced by Pharaoh’s plan in Book of Exodus or by Greek Tragedy, and perhaps a future influence upon George Lukas’ slaughter of Younglings, for Italian painters, this chaotic horror is one of muscular soldiers slashing blades against helpless mothers as dead-gray or bloodied children lay strewn about stony architecture.Their paintingsdepict the destruction and desecrationof the future as children are slain by adult men with knives and swords… or in America with AR15s.

The Massacre of the Innocents speaks to more than a loss of civility or morality. The indiscriminate killing of children is the sign of societal self-destruction; it is the end of humanity, figuratively and literally. Even worse, in America, the setting is not a Biblical setting, it is the classroom, once upon a time the “safest” place in America for children. This massacre of innocents requires more than the denouncement of Evil or the acknowledgement of mental illness, it requires immediate protection for our children, including taking away instant access to weapons, ammunition designed for warfare, and AR15s… especially in America since the machine gun has replaced the knife.