How Down Syndrome Teaches a Selfish World to Love| National Catholic Register

As June 13 marks the 100th birthday of Jérôme Lejeune — the great scientist who discovered the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome, and worked indefatigably to love people with Down syndrome and care for them — writer and editor Fran Maier of the Ethics and Public Policy Center shared his own thoughts about this “great man,” and what he himself has learned from raising a child with Down syndrome. 

Just ahead of this joyous occasion, where we remember Servant of God Jérôme Lejeune and his legacy, a viral story took over the internet when a YouTube influencer couple decided to broadcast their decision to kill their unborn child over a Down syndrome diagnosis. 

“There’s a sadness about that couple that I thought about all morning,” Maier told Ashley McGuire and Betsy Fentress while appearing on EWTN Radio’s Conversations with Consequences. 

A Double Tragedy

Maier read the statement from the couple and what struck him the most about the posting “was that, unintentionally probably, they were casting themselves as the victim: ‘We’re so sad, we’re so sorry.’ There’s a tendency in an indulgent culture to think that admitting this was a difficult problem, or that this was a bad thing apparently to do, gives you exoneration. It doesn’t do that. The child is dead.”

The First Things editor also pointed to the “shallowness” of what they did “because they’ve done something as influencers and expected a kind of affirmation from their followers, or criticism from the ‘barbarians’ who don’t like them — it’s all shallow.”

Maier said there are two tragedies here: “They’ve killed their child, but they’ve also killed something in themselves because they’ve denied not just that child’s life, but all of the life that would come from it.”

Daily Blessings of Raising Dan

As a father of four with the youngest, Dan, having Down syndrome, Maier said in his family, “one of the many benefits of Dan’s life is that our other three children are never going to be biased against the disabled.”

Dan is 35 now. 

“What you learn very quickly is that they have all the same personality traits that the rest of us do. Now, are they closer to heaven? Sure, because they don’t have the capacity to commit certain sins. But Dan is a very shrewd dude. I mean, he understands really good-looking women and he knows how to play the victim around them because he knows that it works. But he’s also not above lying.”

He also has a huge soft spot for the foundress of EWTN. 

“He is a complete fanatic about Mother Angelica. He will spend an hour watching Mother Angelica and saying the Stations of the Cross with her. And then two minutes later, I’ll come in and he’s watching some woman do gym jumps,” Maier said, adding that his son’s faculties are fine. They just have special needs that “force us to be engaged in a way that we might not otherwise be engaged.”

‘Our Bodies Are Part of Our Humanity’

Coming on the heels of reading Pope Leo’s AI encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Maier mentioned the idea of transhumanism:

“It’s very important to understand that our bodies are part of us. They’re not some sort of separate mechanism that wears out, so we get irritated with it, as if we have this little man in our head that is the ‘real me.’ Our bodies are part of our humanity; we’re not humans without them.”

That’s why touch is extremely important when it comes to raising children who have Down syndrome.

“I mean to massage him so that he feels it. I can say, ‘I love you very much, Dan,’ and I can get him good things and feed him, but if I don’t touch him, I’m not locating him. He needs that. You have to make a point of embracing them and reassuring them with your touch. When we pray with Dan, we put our hands on his head; he knows that.”

‘I Wouldn’t Give Away a Minute of It’

Dan also makes Fran and his wife, Suann depend on each other in a new way. 

“We’re never going to have the empty nest, divorce thing — it’s just not going to happen because reality will never allow us to get to the threshold of that.”

Speaking of his beloved wife, whom he has been married to for more than half a century, he told EWTN Radio, “We’ve had all the routine setbacks, failures, disappointments, and rough parts in our marriage. But when we look back, it’s very reassuring,” Maier said, before referencing the influencers again: 

“What that couple did is prevent themselves from having that experience, and it’s sad. It’s just sad.”

Days as a Script Writer 

Having spent eight years in Hollywood writing scripts, Maier recalled his days in Tinseltown and the wages of celebrity, whether onscreen or online: 

“When I was in the film industry, I was very conscious that hot actors sooner or later are not hot anymore. They have their time in the sun, they’re very talented, and they earned it, but it very rarely lasts. When you’re an influencer, sooner or later that influence is going to run out because people are going to get tired of you or you’re going to get old. And then what do you have? Well, you have that memory of almost being pregnant or almost having that child, and you’ll never know the answer to what would have happened if that child had lived and what that might have brought you.”

Maier said the couple perplexes him really to the point of irritation, “because they did a stupid, destructive thing.”

But on the other hand, he said:

“I just have a kind of weird sympathy for them because they’re going to have to live with this, and what they’re enjoying right now, they’re not going to have in a short time. It just never lasts. That’s why people who pull a ripcord on a marriage 15 or 25 years in aren’t even halfway. Sue and I have been married 56 years and I wouldn’t give away a minute of it. Not a minute of it.”

The Lejeune Example

As we reflect on the life of Jérôme Lejeune, whose path to sainthood is underway, we are grateful for his discovery of Down syndrome, and the many blessings in the world that are marked by this chromosome, like dear Dan Maier. 

And just as Lejeune worked to defend these defenseless children who fall into the category of “eradication” in some countries, we remember his heroic life as postulator of his cause, Aude Dugast told the Register:

“He did not follow the spirit of the times. His morals were safe… And that’s heroic because he knew he was going to get in a lot of trouble for doing that.” 

And even in the face of death threats, Lejeune “always remained incredibly calm and gentle. And Providence was stronger from then on, he was recognized as the true defender of life. This is the mark of his heroic nature.”

May we all strive to follow his example and recognize as Pope Leo said that “every child is a dream of God.”