The complicity of silence
MASS Ex ore infántium
EPISTLE Apocalypse 14: 1-5
GOSPEL St Matthew 2: 13-18
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
Beloved in Christ,
On this Octave Day the Church no longer veils the horror of Bethlehem with mourning; she exposes its meaning with judgment and light. The violet of grief has yielded to red. The Gloria and the Alleluia return. What was lamented is now interpreted; what was suffered is now crowned. The Holy Innocents are revealed not merely as victims of cruelty, but as martyrs who reign—and in their light one figure stands fully exposed: Herod.
The Church deliberately returns us to him.
Herod is not seized by blind rage. He is calculating, informed, and deliberate. He listens carefully to the Magi. He consults Scripture. He summons the priests and scribes. He learns precisely where the Christ is to be born. He even adopts the language of piety: “That I too may come and adore Him.” This is not ignorance. It is manipulation.
Herod’s fear is not instinctive panic; it is the fear of a man who knows his authority is fragile. He is not of David’s line. He rules by Roman favour, not covenant. The Magi’s question—“Where is He that is born King of the Jews?”—does not threaten him militarily; it threatens him ontologically. It implies that kingship is received, not seized; bestowed by God, not secured by force.
This is what terrifies Herod.
The Gospel is exacting. Herod is not compelled. He is not coerced. He is not confused. He chooses. He chooses deception over adoration, calculation over conversion, power over repentance. When the Magi do not return, Herod is left with uncertainty—and uncertainty is intolerable to a fearful ruler. He does not know where the Child is. He does not know whether the truth still lives. And so, rather than submit to truth, he widens the scope of destruction. Innocence itself must be erased, lest the truth survive somewhere unseen.
The massacre, then, is not madness; it is overkill born of fear. It is the decision that if truth cannot be controlled, it must be smothered indiscriminately.
Here the Church forces us to recognise the enduring pattern.
Herod passed from history, but his logic did not.
It is the logic of threatened authority: If I cannot master the truth, I will destroy whatever might carry it. It is the logic that sacrifices the innocent not from necessity, but from fear. It is the logic that prefers indiscriminate harm to humble repentance.
But this logic does not operate alone. It requires something else to succeed: silence.
Herod’s massacre did not occur in isolation. Orders were issued. Soldiers obeyed. Officials complied. Neighbours looked away. Priests who knew the Scriptures had already named Bethlehem, yet the city did not rise to defend its children. Evil advanced not only by command, but by acquiescence.
Silence is fear made respectable.
Silence is fear that has found an alibi.
Silence does not merely fail to stop evil—it authorises it.
History bears this out with dreadful clarity. The great atrocities of the modern age did not begin with camps and mass graves. They began with policies tolerated, language adjusted, objections deferred, consciences dulled. Again and again, evil advanced because too many decided it was safer not to speak.
Recent inquiries into organised child sexual exploitation have documented the same mechanism. Abuse persisted not because warnings were absent, but because authorities feared the consequences of naming perpetrators. Professionals hesitated; concerns were minimised; responsibility was deferred. Fear of reprisal, fear of denunciation, fear of being accused of intolerance all proved more powerful than the duty to protect children. Silence was chosen as the safer course—and children paid the price.
This is Herodian logic translated into modern bureaucracy.
Silence becomes policy.
Evasion becomes safeguarding.
Fear becomes prudence.
The Octave Day will not allow such language to stand.
For the Holy Innocents judge not only those who wield the knife, but those who sheath their conscience. They expose the lie that silence is neutral. Silence is not the absence of action; it is an action that sides with the powerful against the powerless.
Parents who sense something is wrong but say nothing.
Professionals who record concerns but do not escalate them.
Officials who “balance sensitivities” while children suffer.
Each silence, taken alone, appears small. Together, they become catastrophic.
The Church dares to say on this day what polite society resists: fear of reprisal is not a moral justification. Fear of denunciation does not absolve responsibility. Fear may explain silence—but it does not excuse it.
Herod feared losing power.
Others feared losing reputation.
Children lost their innocence.
And so today the Church does more than honour martyrs; she issues a summons. To honour the Holy Innocents on their Octave Day is not merely to remember them, but to stand with them. To refuse Herod’s logic in every form. To reject manipulation, euphemism, and cowardice. To speak the truth calmly, plainly, and without hatred—yet without evasion.
The red vestments proclaim that Christ reigns, not Herod. The Alleluia announces that fear is not sovereign. The Innocents reign because they were abandoned by men but received by God. We, who still have voices, will be judged by how we use them.
Silence did not save Bethlehem.
Silence did not and will not save the children of our own time.
May the triumph of the Holy Innocents give us the grace to resist fear, to speak when silence is demanded, and to defend the young before harm is normalised once more.
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