Should Other Culprits Be on Trial? The Clancy Case

For weeks, a sense of unease has bothered my thinking about the Lindsay Clancy murder case.  Something nagged.  Something was “missing.”  Then I learned more about the Catholic mother of three all under the “age of reason” who also proclaimed that her (baptized) children were now with God—safe with God.  And I am wondering:  Who or what should truly be on trial?  For one, yes Lindsay Clancy.  She murdered her children, and it is not at all certain, she lacked sufficient sanity to know that, on at least one level, what she was doing opposed the Fifth Commandment.  

 
The following are my personal musings, and perhaps future disclosures will bring better light.  I am neither a mental health professional—though very much acquainted with this field and an advocate for  decades—nor a spiritual counselor or director.  So kindly take what follows in that context.  At the root of this horrific act may well be an extreme crisis of Faith (trust in God), coupled by true crippling postpartum depression and obsessive paranoia, fueled by myriad psychiatric drugs in a vacuum of wholesome psychiatric response and treatment, via a care facility.  (Too many such hospitalizations offer as much as insurance will cover.)  Ruminating about an increasingly diabolically influenced culture may have ultimately driven Lindsay Clancy to this extreme resolution, whereby she actually was convinced she was rescuing her children for eternity.  What she is quoted as saying seems to confirm this conclusion.  I also wondered about demonic influence, but that is way beyond my expertise.  Critics point to a weak suicide attempt, as proof that she “staged” a mental breakdown, but, then again, she may have had enough awareness to fear her own damnation, and hesitated.  A priest identified as Father Bob might have more insights, but for now may still be retrained from sharing any.  There may be another trial.

 
I would hope that all of us can also re-examine this through one other scope:  the culpability of society.  The culture of death permeates every aspect, from conception to birth, to school, to public squares, to life and death issues.  Parents today confront governments that not only fail to support them in rearing their children virtuously,  the state frequently combats and prevents them from doing so under the threat of loss of custody in the most egregious situations.    Consider all the cases whereby a parent has forfeited the right to instruct his or her child, but a government school may impose teachings that contradict truth.  Some innocent children have been sex changed in the absence of parental approval.  Homes are barraged with all types of messaging whereby even an innocent Internet exploration turns into a sick infliction of porn or anti Christian propaganda.  

 
Where can any family venture without some infliction of insult to God’s Word?  Not the pool or the beach; often not the library.  Stores are replete with “in your face” merchandizing that contaminates the senses and imprints unholy images upon the brains of the smallest among us.  Even in the case of Lindsay Clancy, was the State of Massachusetts more intent on a murder trial of a Catholic mother under tremendous distress (anticipating the future) than truly exposing the torturous environment itself has developed in contradiction to authentic freedom of families to rear their children in the Faith without undue interference or publicly ostracizing  condemnation?

As I learned more about this case, I also questioned the defense.  Why had Clancy’s attorney not struck the cord of extreme panic that can cripple reason in the actual religiously persecuted.   He fixated on the meds and poor response to her cries for help—medically speaking— as the cause of  Lindsay’s madness.  Did he realize that following the timeline of her devolvement against the backdrop of a fraying culture— the dominant trigger—would have led to a conviction, not based on murder, per se, but what some fickle minds would have interpreted to be religious fanaticism. There was a gamble that the progressives would condemn Lindsay Clancy for revealing the ultimate outcome of our death culture:  Families devolving mentally over tyrannical government gone amok.  Marriage has lost its luster as indissoluble Holy Matrimony—if there is marriage at all.  Other unions contradict sanctified family formation.    Abortion is murder.  Sixty-five million or so such in this country alone since the ‘70s.  

 
If Lindsay Clancy is guilty of murder, then so is the State of Massachusetts (and other States) and every pro abortion juror, noting that now this killing is permitted up to birth.  So, one can see that the safer course was to direct the defense to lead to a decision that Lindsay Clancy would be found not guilty of murder with psychosis as the convenient scapegoat.  (This not a dispute that psychosis may have been a factor.). And notice that it was “postpartum depression” that mobilized sympathetic modernistic women to come to Lindsay Clancy’s defense and publicly protest her trial.  (I have read posts by these angry women who blame men for this and other maternal crises). 

 
Look at this case again, based one the foregoing, and the devolvement of Lindsay Clancy’s sanity becomes more understandable—NOT excusable—but the increasing panic and ultimate killing before the children reached the “age of reason” and could be corrupted—mushroomed in her mind—culminated in this terrible decision.  As I saw the events through this prism, I softened towards Lindsay.  (Likely this would have me excused from a jury pool for this or any similar case in the future.) I pray for Lindsay Clancy,  and that she ultimately realizes the mortal sin she committed even if she lacked total culpability.  Candidly her physical state seems to indicate a life of penance anyway.  I also believe that her children, who now know everything, will intercede for her and bring her back to full health, mind and soul, and perhaps, body.