Downton Abbey: Knowing Our Place
Spoiler Alert: Season 3, Episode 4 Last night, Downton Abbey brought the plot back to the beginning of its first story-line and to one of the central themes of modernity: Man versus Nature. It was especially poignant to me in the wake of last week's anniversary of Roe-v-Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States, as I thought about how we, as Catholics, defend the sanctity of all human life. In the very first episode of Season One, the family and staff have learned of the tragic news of the Titanic sinking. There was the grief over loss of human life on such a large scale, the horror of what the last moments were like for the victims, the faces of personal friends and families called to mind when reading the list of the dead. Then, there was the shock. It was the shock of the time for those who heard the news. It is the shock we still feel when watching news clips of flooded cities or plane crash wreckage. Today, in t...