Catholic-Jewish Debate

Dear Editor: In a recent letter, Jim Lundrigan gave a terribly simplistic analysis of the differences between Jews and Catholics in their approach to political issues.

For example, he stated that “Catholics favored Franco in the Spanish Civil War and Jews favored the Communists.” Although many Jews did support the Spanish Republicans in their fight against Franco, so did many Christians, such as Ernest Hemingway, Mary McCarthy, John Dos Passos, and Pablo Picasso, and they had good reasons for doing so. They knew that fascists like Franco could be as brutal as the Communists, and they were proven correct by Franco’s alliance with Hitler and Mussolini, and by his massacre of a Basque village called Guernica.

Mr. Lundrigan also stated that “most Catholics favored Joe McCarthy and Jews were behind Alger Hiss.” However, supporting Joe McCarthy isn’t exactly something to be proud of because he persecuted people who were not involved in espionage, but were merely involved in organizations that were considered to be too sympathetic to the Soviet Union. In any case, Alger Hiss, unlike the Rosenbergs, was not convicted of espionage. He was convicted of perjury.

I agree with Mr. Lundrigan that “Catholics are on the right side of the abortion issue.” But so are many Jews.

JOHN FRANCIS FOX
Brooklyn

Dear Editor: I am writing in response to the letter of Jim Lundrigan (May 12). I have two issues. First, how does Mr. Lundrigan substantiate his broad generalities? How does one make such general claims without offering a footnote or referring us to some concrete historical or sociological research on the issues? How can he know all Catholics supported Franco and that all Jews supported Communism? Upon what is this statement based? What does he mean by the word Church? Does he mean the leadership, the people, the local national Catholic community? Are Catholics monolithic in their voting or political positions? What is Mr. Lundrigan talking about?

Msgr. Guy Massie
Bay Ridge

Sen. McCarthy’s Lonely Voice

Dear Editor: While offering a lukewarm defense of Tablet editor Patrick Scanlan as not necessarily bigoted, a contributor from April 21 praised a previous letter writer, who made accusations of bigotry for his accomplishments as an intellectual utilizing Marxist analysis. He also echoed the common perception of Joseph McCarthy as a reckless destroyer of lives.

Being raised by a communist parent – who later defected, converted to the Catholic faith, and suffered slander to his reputation from former progressive friends – I was required to read a great deal of Marxist drivel in my college years.

Among other character flaws, Karl Marx was a man who treated his lifelong servant, to whom he never paid a cent in wages, as a mistress. He got her pregnant, forced her to have abortions, and beat her when she resisted, a familiar pattern among progressives. His thought, if it can be called thought, boils down to the same stupidity and conceit that all self adoring intellectuals have been peddling since the dark age of the Enlightenment; man is just a bundle of appetites, drives, and a lust for power predetermined by biology, history and sociology, excepting those, of course, who perform this analysis. You know a man is probably a moral lunatic when most intellectuals agree he is a genius. Anointed intellectuals like Marx had no room for the appeal and humility of faith, or even a capacity to acknowledge that a man’s search for meaning has meaning in itself not easily explained by cynicism, a cynicism, in his case, so vile it created justifications for mass murder that more than quadrupled all episodes of carnage in the whole of human history combined.

McCarthy, although a flawed human being, was nevertheless a lone voice in America speaking out against thousands in government that actually were Communists. “McCarthyism” has become a reflexive adjective among liberals to evoke fantasies of persecution. But in 1995 the National Security Agency made public 1,400 intercepts of messages between the United States and the Soviet Union. And the collapse of Communism opened files of not only internal Soviet spy documents but also gave the FBI, CIA and the American scholars access to files of the American Communist Party held in Russia. This information has vindicated almost every charge McCarthy made.

Of the thousands of documents exposed, long promoted as innocent martyrs, were Alger Hiss, the No. 3 man at the State Department who would eventually become Secretary of State; Harry White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who purposely withheld allocated funding for the Chinese Nationalists during their Civil War, destroying their currency and turning the tide in favor of Mao’s Communists;

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who actually were conduits for damaging information, not only for the atom bomb but national security practices; Lauchlin Currie, Special Assistant to F.D.R.; Samuel Dickstein, member of the House of Representatives from Brooklyn; William and Martha Dodd, son and daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Germany in the 1930s; Lawrence Duggan, State Department Director of Latin America Affairs; Harold Ickes, father of Clinton’s impeachment defender, Secretary of the Interior, and William Weisband of the U.S. Army Signal Security Agency. Unfortunately, McCarthy got very few removed, but among these was Owen Lattimore, who coined the term “McCarthyism.” Lattimore had been Director of the School of International Relations, was advisor to F.D.R. on China, and preached that Mao’s Communists were “agrarian reformers.” In 1948 he insisted George Marshall stop aid to Chiang Kai-Shek and his Nationalists.

It wasn’t only Walter Duranty and The New York Times who covered up Stalin’s deliberate starvation of 10 million Ukrainians. Communists in Hollywood, who knew about it, kept silent, including several who were later blacklisted. So slavishly devoted were many in Hollywood, under orders from Moscow, Dalton Trumbo condemned his own work when its pacifist message was seen by Moscow as dangerously undermining revolutionary action. The few leftists in Hollywood who experienced what were largely mere interruptions in their careers is very small compared to the ongoing blacklisting of conservative directors, writers and actors from then till the present. Catholic editors were mindful of McCarthy’s often strident and smug style, characteristics more typical of leftists, but quite properly supported his laudable objectives.

Jonathan Mayhue
Brooklyn Heights

Evangelization, Pass It On

Dear Editor:  The Tablet (May 12) featured Bishop DiMarzio’s column discussing “A New Plan for Communications.”

Reading the column brought back to mind some thoughts I had a few years ago about what I as an individual Catholic could do to communicate my faith – in effect to “evangelize.” I decided that one very small thing I could do is to “recycle” Catholic literature, and never just to throw it away!

So, for example, whenever I finish reading The Tablet, Catholic New York, First Things, Maryknoll Magazine, etc., I do one of the following: pass it on to a relative or friend, leave it in the back of church, or even leave it on the bus or subway or in a restaurant.

So, I invite my fellow Tablet readers to join me in doing the same. A very small thing. But, by God’s grace, maybe a big thing, a helpful thing, for someone searching out there. Try it!

Vito J. De Santis
Manhattan

Help Wanted in Brownsville

Dear Editor: After five years of faithful volunteer service, Sister Margaret Quinlivan, C.S.J., will be leaving Our Lady of the Presentation parish, Brownsville, for personal reasons. She has put together a wonderful religious education program here and we will miss her dedication and generous spirit.

On page 25 of The Tablet (March 31), there was an advertisement for a Director of Religious Education in Chappaqua. I share their need but cannot afford to advertise nor offer a “highly competitive salary” nor “generous resources.” What I can offer is a group of about 150 alive, inquisitive and highly motivated children with a desire to learn about Jesus and a staff of loving and dedicated certified volunteers who provide their generous human resources to share their faith with the children.
If you or your readers know of anyone interested in this part-time position, please ask them to give me a call at 718-345-2604.

I will remember all of you and yours at the altar on Easter.
A Blessed Easter!

Msgr. Joseph Nugent
Brownsville

Editor’s Note: Msgr. Nugent is the pastor of Our Lady of the Presentation parish, Brownsville.

New Bishop from Queens

Dear Editor: I’m fairly certain that it is accurate to say that Bishop Peter Libasci (Auxiliary of Rockville Centre) is the first of St. Margaret’s sons to be ordained a bishop.

I’m sure he won’t mind if I refer to him as Pete. We were altar boys in the mid-’60s together and then went on to meet again at St. John’s University.  There was always something special about Pete. I kind of knew that one day he would be a priest and maybe even wear a bishop’s miter.

I’m certain that Father John Pfiefauf (the celebrant of the first Mass we served) is looking at Pete from his place in heaven without much surprise that “the kid” did so well.

I would like to wish him God’s most abundant blessings as he joins the ranks of the likes of those many bishops who we knew as kids, and those who shepherd the Church today.

God bless you, Pete!

John F. DeBiase
Middle Village

A Vote for Ron Paul

Dear Editor: Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton are not only pro-abortion, they are also liberal in many other areas. Both believe in granting special rights to gays! These “geniuses” actually think gays should be able to get married to each other!
Both Giuliani and Clinton are pro-gun control also.

Giuliani wants this nightmare of a war to continue. The truth is that this was unnecessary. Three thousand dead Americans! For what? What have we won?
Barry Goldwater would be flipping in his grave if he knew what has been happening to the conservative movement.

In my opinion, the best candidate for president is Congressman Ron Paul (R.-Texas). He is a solid conservative who believes that government should be functioning under the American Constitution. Wow! What a radical idea! This would mean that our politicians would be held in check and forced to be honest and to obey the law. Incredible!

Michael Mullaney
Bayside