A starving child is a judgment on the world.

Agus sin í an fhírinne ghlan—And that is the plain truth.

And that judgment begins with us.

As a man, I am sickened. The older I get, the more I understand what strength is for. And it is not for conquest. It is not for domination. It is for standing in the breach. For using your body and your words to protect the weak. To be silent now, when children are being choked slowly by hunger, is to surrender manhood itself.

As a father, I am undone. I’ve seen my children sick with fever, weak with flu, curled in sleep after a hard day. And I’ve thanked God every time there was food in the house, clean water to give, arms to hold them. I cannot imagine what it is to watch your child waste away because the trucks won’t come, the borders are shut, and the world has turned its face to something more palatable.

As a father—Mar athair—I say this: no cause on earth is worth the death of a hungry child.

As a priest, I say this plainly and without apology: To starve a child is to spit in the face of God. And if your gospel cannot name that plainly, if your faith bends in cowardly silence while this goes on, then your gospel is not worth preaching.

I do not care what side you’re on. I do not care what name you pray to. If you can justify the slow, mechanical murder of a child by hunger in the name of safety, in the name of strategy, in the name of national pride or religious war or economic leverage, then you have already lost your soul. Tá tú caillte—You are lost.