Last year was the 700th anniversary of St. Ives, patron saint of lawyers. On May 19, 1303, Ivo Helory entered Heaven. Now known as St. Ivo, St. Yves, or St. Ives, he was a French Franciscan lawyer who often defended the poor without charge. He fought the state over taxes and the rights of the Church, refused the usual bribes, and worked to settle claims out of court. According to a 14th-century poem, “Saint Yvo was a . . . lawyer, but not dishonest — An astonishing thing!”
St. Ives was beloved for his peacemaking, honesty, and charity. It is said that we lawyers chose him as our patron, not as our pattern, because people are still astonished when a lawyer practices peacemaking, honesty, and charity. The great pilgrimages to his tomb were commemorated in this nursery rhyme:
As I was going to St. Ives
I met a man with seven wives,
and every wife had seven sacks,
and every sack had seven cats,
and every cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
how many were going to St. Ives?
The riddle invites us to compute 1 + 7 + 7×7 + 7x7x7 + 7x7x7x7, but that is a trick. It is a lawyer’s trick of reframing the issue. To see through the riddle, look at the scene in relation to the shrine. The answer lies not in calculating, but in considering where you are headed. When you reframe it, the riddle says, “As I was going to St. Ives, I met a strange polygamous family headed away from the shrine of the good lawyer.” So how many were going to St. Ives? The answer is not 2,800, but only one.
In our day we also have polygamous and other strange “families” appealing to lawyers. In the entire history of mankind, homosexual “marriage” was never formally legalized until 2001 in Holland. On May 17, 2004, by a bare 4-3 majority, the highest court in Massachusetts introduced “gay marriage” to our nation. The people of Massachusetts are opposed to it, demanding government for the people, not government of four people. In response, their legislators gave them a chance to vote that marriage is one man and one woman, but only if they also vote for civil unions.
This is the fruit of decades of trivialization of marriage. Since the 1960s, when we demoted marriage to an optional form of family, we have created a culture that says that we can define marriage to be whatever we want it to be, and that we can define human life to be whatever we want it to be.
Recombinant genetics mixes the cell components of various humans and animals. Recombinant reproduction mixes the DNA of one donor and the egg of another in the womb of yet another donor, and may give the resulting baby to still other parents. Recombinant marriage replaces a husband and a wife with other options. We are headed away from St. Ives to a brave new world where cats are called animal partners and parents are called adult partners.
Two arguments are made for these new arrangements: money and rights. Proponents of the new morality argue that abortion and suicide are constitutional rights as well as good cost-cutting decisions. Activists tally up tax dollars, welfare payments, and hospital bills against what they claim to be victimless acts. Indeed, the cost of raising a child or caring for a handicapped person is staggering if we forget to weigh it against the priceless value of that life.
We need to stop adding up dollars and multiplying false “rights.” Like the riddle about St. Ives, the puzzle of our society is not solved by mathematics but by considering where we are headed. As a nation we are headed towards degradation deeper than that of pagan Rome. As individuals we are headed towards Heaven or Hell, according to whether we love God’s law or not.
Let us pray to St. Ives that our nation’s law will reflect God’s law. We need the help of Heaven to reform. In this hour of need, how many are going to St. Ives?
— Colbe C. Mazzarella, Esq.
Sr. Anna Maria Taigi, M.I.C.M., Tert.
A note of explanation. The preceding is a rarity in these pages: a signed guest “Did You Know?” Our Third Order member is also a lawyer residing in Massachusetts, and, for obvious reasons, this piece is best signed by a member of that profession from that state.
