Today in History: Abe Lincoln weds

It was a day like today.

The Roman Calendar marks November 4 as the commemoration of St. Charles Borromeo, the son of Count Gilberto Borromeo and Margaret Medici, the sister of Ppe Pius IV. Sent at an early age for his education at a Benedictine abbey, Charles was to play a role in having Pius reconvene the Council of Tret which had been suspended for 10 years. Refusing the headship of the powerful Borromeo family, Charles was to become one of the most notable figures of the Catholic Reformation for overcoming resistance from fellow Catholics. He was even wounded by an assassin, a priest who belonged to the Humiliati Order that Borromeo had tried to reshape.

Also noted on this day is St. Emeric, the only son of King St. Stephen of Hungary. Killed whilst hunting, young Emeric was never to succeed to the throne. At his tomb at Szekesfehevar, many miracles were noted and he, along with his father, was canonized in 1083. His name is the origin of the "Amerigo", the name borne by the Italian merchant Amerigo Vespucci, who claimed to have discovered South America in 1497. The name "America" has stuck to the New World ever since.

On this date in 1842, lawyer Abraham Lincoln, aged thirty-three, married slave-owing socialite Mary Todd, twenty-three, at Springfield Illinois. Said one witness to the bonds, the bridegroom looked “pale and trembling as being driven to slaughter.”

Words of Wisdom: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote in Life is Worth Living, “A person is a being with a rational soul and, therefore, has rights. A pig has no rational soul and, therefore, has no rights…A baby has a soul and, therefore, has inalienable rights, even though the baby cannot express its desire to live. Rights do not depend on utility or social welfare, but on the soul itself. Abortion is wrong because if the soul is there, there is a person.”