Salvation Outside State

Dear Editor: I agree with some of Rick Lewis’ points (March 29) but cannot help objecting to his description of our faith by commenting on what Jesus would approve or disapprove. One of many things we can be sure Jesus would not do is sympathize with our need to blame evilness in the world on those we suppose are different from ourselves.

Lewis seems to believe that Jesus would agree that government is responsible for solving human problems, which he illustrates with a familiar and stale criticism of Republicans for not miraculously ending abortion while having a slim hold on Congress. He overlooks the role of state governments and doesn’t mention the partial birth abortion ban or The Born Alive Infant Protection Act Congress passed against Democratic Party opposition acting like a wholly owned subsidiary of the abortion industry. Neither is mention made of continuous sabotaging of pro-life legislation by liberal-appointed judges. Concern for the poor he associates with Democrats, although faulting them for not miraculously eliminating poverty. It is a subject for another forum to examine why large scale governmental attempts to end poverty always exacerbate poverty and why we tend to resist understanding this.  

Lewis recognizes that the abortion mindset is cultural, but singles out Catholics for failing when it matters, especially Catholic politicians immersed in “personally opposed” phoniness. Clearly true, but the reason for this has to do with popular distortions of the Catholic faith by preferring to ask what would Jesus do rather than asking the “what would Jesus have me do” question.

When we ask the first question, we tend to use it as a ploy for inventing a Jesus who would be like us and share our contempt with those who are not like us. Self-adoration is common among those lacking faith, but Catholics are called to be countercultural and be willing to absorb hatred, not to be dishing out hatred, which, by the way, includes not hating presidents.

Not asking the second question results in a failure to accept our calling, evidenced not only by shriveled confessional lines or a refusal to recognize the frequent hatred for Catholicism practiced by Catholics themselves, but by a willingness of Catholics to submit, in one form or another, to a near totalitarian anti-Christian culture.

This would include Christianity ridiculing public school systems, with nine-year-olds indoctrinated into embracing abortion rights, universities that teach false history and neo-atheist-Marxist interpretations of human nature that reject the sacred dignity of the human person, class hatred masquerading as social justice, demands for government programs masquerading as compassion that avoid sharing the Cross of our Lord, anti-population agendas masquerading as science that give pretext not only for promiscuous government power but justify the extermination of burdensome lives, a movie industry that exploits ignorance by distorting the truths and meaning of human history and promotes illusions of consequence-free illicit sex, elitist and morally thickheaded judiciaries ungrounded in religious faith or a capacity to recognize how they usurp and destroy democratic processes with fantasy interpretations of the Constitution, and a television medium that is seldom more than a propaganda tool for reinforcing the progressive world view that there is no redemption outside of government.

We often prefer giving in to experiences that don’t require too much counter-cultural changing of our lives.

Anthony Rivituso
Forest Hills

Israel Could Have Acted Sooner

Dear Editor: I too would like to excoriate Israel on what reader “Jim S.” from Brooklyn terms its “inhuman” treatment of the Palestinian people. 

The Palestinians in Gaza are indeed human, with the human capacity to know wrong and right. Since 2001, they have fired some 7,000 “weak missiles” (as Jim terms them), into sovereign Israeli territory, purposely aiming at homes and schools.  The bulk of these missiles were launched after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2006 and handed sovereignty to the Palestinians of Gaza.  Gazans should be treated as human beings responsible for murder and terror: 11 Israeli citizens have already been murdered and a whole generation of children have grown up not knowing a day’s peace. 

Shame on Israel for not acting more forcefully to end the unprecedented, horrific situation facing its civilians in areas adjacent to the Gaza Strip — can Jim imagine the borough of Brooklyn being on the receiving end of such daily attacks from the island of Manhattan?  If Israel had acted more responsibly/forcefully earlier on, with God’s help, the innocent residents of Sderot and neighboring areas, as well as residents of Gaza, would now be living normal lives.

David Koerner
Brooklyn

Visit to the Holy Land

Dear Editor: Your recent article “Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus is Awesome” made me reflect on my recent pilgrimage to the Holy Land. People should not be afraid to visit the Holy Land; it is quite safe. The country of Israel welcomes tourists. I have seen an increase of people visiting the Holy Land, which is a good sign. The Franciscan order do a wonderful job of protecting and upkeep of the holy sites.

John P. McHugh
Fresh Meadows

Be Informed About Abort Bill

Dear Editor: In your Feb. 23 editorial “Be an Informed Voter,” you mentioned the most radical abortion bill proposed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act. This bill would remove parents from assisting their children in making significant decisions in their lives because it prohibits parental notification.

As parents, we believe our children have the right to a father and mother to take care of them and accompany them as they grow to maturity. The State must support, with adequate social policies, everything that promotes the stability, dignity and responsibility of the parents and their right to be educators of their children.

We have laws in effect that govern many decisions for our minors referring to parental notification requirements for school field trips, etc. When it comes to the abortion industry in New York State, the facts are quite different. There is abortion-on-demand without parental consent and Medicaid will pay the bill.

How can you require parental permission for school field trips and then permit children to get secret abortions without notifying their parents? 

The abortion industry in New York State has unlimited power in performing an invasive surgical procedure like abortion when it comes to our teenage girls, which can cause physical and mental effects that can be scarring for life.

It is public record that prior to becoming governor, Eliot Spitzer was a trustee in his family-run charity, The Spitzer Trust, which donated $101,000 over a five-year period to The NARAL Pro-Choice New York Foundation, which is affiliated with the state’s most influential abortion-rights group.  The abortion lobby is committed to staving off efforts to require parental involvement in minors having an abortion.

This is why we should support Senator Padavan and Assemblyman Barra in their effort to have The Family Protection Act (S.4431/A.03217) passed. The legislation is intended to protect the minor’s health and welfare by requiring parental consent before a final determination can be made about an abortion. This protects the minor and gives the parents their proper responsibility on making a decision of this magnitude with their child’s welfare in mind.

Parents need to be part of this process. An independent report dated Feb. 5, 2007 by Michael J. New, Ph.D., an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama, titled, Analyzing the Effect of State Legislation on the Incidence of Abortion Among Minors, clearly states, “Regression results from this analysis suggest that parental involvement laws and public funding restrictions are effective in reducing the incidence of abortion among minors.

Specifically, the passage of a parental involvement law correlates with a 16% decline in the minor abortion rate, and the passage of Medicaid funding restrictions correlates with a 23% decline in the minor abortion rate.”  

The Family Protection Act has a prior legislative history from 2004 to the present of not having the support of the Assembly to become law. Even though we don’t have a voting agreement or the votes to pass it in the Assembly, and the Governor is opposed at this time, it is still important to promote this legislation and put the bill forward and let our elected representatives know we support it. 

As Bishop DiMarzio stated in a prior weekly column, “We must pray without ceasing, as St. Paul told the Thessalonians, and we must do so backed up by action.” 

Philip Heery
Flushing