Quote Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla View Post
Christians don't kill children.
Funny you should say that...

Kathy Stuart
So she takes this little bit of arsenic. But apparently it was enough to make her violently ill, and for a week, every time she ate, she vomited. But it wasn't enough to make her think that she was now going to die.

Ira Glass
So she never goes to the priest. Figuring out the proper dosage, she testifies later, is just a vexing problem that she doesn't know how to solve. And she gives up that plan, which brings her to a much more disturbing plan. She decides to do something that, to us, to our modern sensibility, is so much worse than killing yourself. From our point of view, she decides to do one of the worst things a person could possibly do.

Kathy Stuart
She decides, I'm going to murder a child.

Ira Glass
That's right. She's going to murder a child to help herself get into Heaven. And incredibly, Kathy Stuart says this was a common strategy around that time for people who wanted to kill themselves. She came across a case like this and then went looking for others like it. And now she has found around 300, most of them women.

Kathy Stuart
These people don't want to go to Hell. So the option that they choose is to commit a capital crime. Immediately upon committing the crime, they run to the court. They confess what they have done, and they essentially demand their own execution.

Ira Glass
So they demand execution knowing that before they go to the gallows, they will have a chance to confess. And if they're truly repentant, they'll go to Heaven. And why kill a child?

Kathy Stuart
They kill a child because the child is seen as being in a state of innocence. So you might possibly be doing the child a favor, because the child will also go to Heaven. You will go to Heaven. It's kind of a win-win situation. There's a happy ending for all.
CR