The Voice Lindsay Clancy Heard?

The Judeo-Christian tradition is filled with holy people and saints known to hear “voices”: from Moses to St. Augustine to St. Joan of Arc to St. Faustina. While cynics may ascribe mental illness to these phenomena, to people of faith discerning and acting upon God’s voice (or his will) is a mark of humility and holiness.

The voice of a demon?

As Jesus Christ models in the Garden of Gethsemane, we discover our true purpose when doing God’s will and not our own, even if it means enduring suffering.

So, why is the male voice Lindsay Clancy heard to kill her three children barbaric? The answer lies in Genesis with Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son, Isaac.

God promised Abraham to make of him a “great nation” with numerous descendants. For Abraham, however, there was no evidence for this promise’s fulfillment as his wife Sarah was perceived to be infertile. He trusted God anyway. God began fulfilling this promise with Isaac’s birth, which could have been the story’s end.

But God had other plans for our Father in Faith. A test of his faith in fact.

God, Abraham, and Isaac

As time passed, God told Abraham to “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love” and “offer him up as a burnt offering.” At face value, this command seems cruel — even unjust. Why would God answer this deep desire, and dangle a promise, only to rip it away? As Bishop Robert Barron preaches, this call “appears that God is at odds with himself.”

Nevertheless, Abraham obliged. Along with two servants and a donkey, father and son journeyed to Moriah to worship God. When arriving, Abraham bound his son, placed him on an altar, and even brandished a knife to slaughter him. In that moment, an angel of the Lord commanded him to “not lay your hand on the boy” and announced that “For now I know that you fear God, since you did not withhold from [him] your son, your only one.”

Instead of filicide, God provided a ram, its horns trapped in a thicket, which Abraham offered up “in place of his son.”

For Abraham, his faith was rewarded. As God promised, the Father of Faith had many descendants through Isaac.

The Biblical story also foreshadows Christ’s eventual death on Calvary. A father sacrificing his son. Ultimate obedience and “awful assent” to God’s will, as Bishop Barron explains. Even the animals — the donkey and ram — reappear in Holy Week with Christ riding into Jerusalem and the crowning of thorns (or thicket).

Exactly whose voice did Lindsay Clancy hear?

For us, however, the near filicide should cause reflection: how far are we willing to trust God, even when we don’t understand? How can we discern and adhere to his voice?

Back to Clancy. She heard a voice. And it told her to kill her children. Didn’t God ask Abraham to do the same?

But was the voice Clancy heard God’s?

This voice is central in her murder case that recently ended in a mistrial. Clancy’s defense claimed she endured years of mental illness, suffering from postpartum psychosis before the filicide on Jan. 24, 2023.

The trial has since morphed into a national and social media lightning rod for feminists, whose misplaced empathy resides with Clancy, an apparent victim of the mental health system’s unequal treatment of women. Yet the macabre fact remains: Clancy’s children — Cora (five years old), Dawson (three years old), and Callan (8-month-old) — are dead. And she killed them.

For the faithful, we must take her claim seriously; and it must serve as a cautionary tale. We are both physical and spiritual beings. Our souls are wired to communicate with God. We were created to hear voices to love him more and engage in what Hans Urs von Balthasar called the Theo-Drama.

Indeed, The Catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes that everyone needs to be “sufficiently present to himself in order to hear and follow the voice of his conscience.” Through our conscience, we can perceive and recognize God’s will and divine law.

Not every voice deserves obedience

But not every voice that speaks to us deserves obedience, and no voice commanding evil can be God’s.

God is not the only voice trying to speak to us. In the Garden of Eden, the devil spoke to Adam and Eve. He tried to tempt Christ in the desert. And he lures us with false promises and commands.

Hearing a voice requires discernment and prayer. Does it seek our good or death of soul? To glorify God or glorify ourselves? If the latter, as Pope Francis warned, we must “Never dialogue with the devil,” but instead “Lift [our hearts] to the Lord, pray to Our Lady and send him away.”

God, ultimately, seeks our true good, leading us to “green pastures.”

Still, hearing his voice can be terrifying to the devout and fledgling alike. For Moses, he “hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” in the burning bush. For Joan of Arc, she initially feared the voices of St. Michael, St. Margaret and St. Catherine asking her to save France. Even the Apostles — who had already witnessed numerous miracles — were “very much afraid” hearing the Father’s voice say, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” at the Transfiguration. 

Every time heaven subverts our feeble understanding of the universe, it should alarm us. But it is also an invitation to awe at God’s majesty and goodness: that he suffered, died, and rose to save us.

The father of lies

The devil, meanwhile, is a liar. His ensnaring voice convinces us we have no free will — or that we are masters of creation and destiny. This same voice, however, argues sin is for our or even others’ good.

But we all have agency; so did Clancy. She didn’t need to listen to the voice. She didn’t have to premeditate her children’s deaths. She didn’t have to strangle them. They didn’t have to die. At any point, she could’ve listened to an angel and stopped — but she kept going. 

What’s also disturbing is the support Clancy has received. True empathy — and desire for justice — has been misdirected from the children to their murderous mother. Three children are gone. Robbed of life. Instead, feminists have touted Clancy as the victim, and her legal fund has amassed more than $1 million in a GoFundMe campaign. The case has revealed, once again, Americans’ rampant penchant for violence: from Luigi Mangione killing Brian Thompson, those celebrating Charlie Kirk’s assassination to how September 11th victims deserved to die.

At this point, the blood lust, animosity, and even jokes feel contrived, seeking notoriety and shared victimhood rather than appealing to our better angels. In fact, it feels deliberate.

Blindness to conscience

We’re an increasingly blind nation to our consciences, where God speaks to us: can we not see that, despite our philosophical and political differences, that everyone has a soul imbued with inherent dignity? And can we not see how Clancy obeyed a hellish instinct unlike Abraham? 

And yet people applaud and chant for the murderer. 

It is the duty of every person to practice prudence, discernment, and obedience; not every voice seeks our good. Not every impulse should be indulged. True love is not empathy, but willing their good and seeking justice.

Through this trial, the nation has seen the catastrophic ends of what transpires when a person listens to the darkness, and an underlying sickness in American society. But we also must remember God is more powerful than evil and creates good even in the midst of tragedy.

Every day is a call for conversion — and hopefully Clancy will seek God’s infinite mercy, which can forgive even the most heinous acts. Until then, each one of us must discern: which voice is trying to lead me today? Does it trust in him more — or does it harden and delude my heart?

This article was originally published by RealClearReligion and made available via RealClearWire.