Father Tim: Sarah Palin, My Hero

Father Tim, a Jesuit missionary, doesn't share Sarah Palin's views on many political issues, but he writes that the former governor made a spiritual connection with him through her book Going Rogue because she gave birth to her son Trig, a Down Syndrome child. For that act of love, Father Tim says, Sarah Palin is his hero:

Now, Sarah Palin is a politician, and... there is probably not a great deal about her politics and mine that match.

Or that matter.

Life and love do matter, though — more than anything. For they are gifts from Our Loving Father. Politics, while it occupies an important place in this strange world we have created as a poor substitute for God’s Perfect World, is built from human perception. God does not perceive anything; He knows.

This is why God does not see “defects” in His Own Perfect Creations. When we see as He does — or if we simply try to see as He does — our lives move closer to the peace and love that is our birthright from Him.

And it is quite clear that Sarah Palin — whatever one may think of her politics — has shared the Thoughts of God by letting Him bring Trig into the world when she might have done otherwise. And by loving him as God loves His Dear Children: without condition.

[...]

I do not know whether her doctors made any suggestion to the Palins that the early diagnosis of Down Syndrome should make them consider an “alternative” — but I know that others do. The same conversations hover near the “terminally ill,” and the slippery slope gets ever more slippery.

But for Sarah Palin and her family, at least, there was no attempt to out-think God — truly a fool’s errand. Instead, they embraced His changeless and unchangeable Love.

They are worlds richer for it. And for that, Sarah Palin, you are a hero.

Read Father Tim's full op-ed at Irish Central.

- JP