Unsure About Candidates

Dear Editor: I am a middle-class, middle-aged, white, Catholic, pro-life, Italian-American voter and I take exception to the last paragraph of the Aug. 2 editorial.  

The Tablet implies that the Catholic voter’s lack of conviction on Right to Life issues is the primary causative factor in the dearth of candidates supporting these issues.  Perhaps it is true that many Catholics do not assign Right to Life issues sufficient weight.  Speaking for myself, however, I agonize over these decisions.  

I would be extraordinarily happy to vote for a candidate who clearly supports the rights of the unborn along with other issues of great social importance. More than once, I have left the voting booth without casting a vote in a particular category for fear of making the wrong decision.

In the current election, I find myself faced with one candidate with whom I agree with most everything except Right to Life issues and another with whom I agree with almost nothing except Right to Life issues. Elections are not a fun time for Catholic voters. 

Rather than simply berate Catholic voters, The Tablet might have encouraged Catholics who believe in the importance of pro-life issues to contact the candidates now and make their voices heard. Write letters, send e-mails, make phone calls. Public opinion is most effective before the elections. Maybe then we will see a change in their positions before we cast our votes.  

At this point in time I do not know how I will vote, or even if I will vote. I pray I will make the right decision.  

NAME WITHHELD
Brooklyn 

Dialogue with Dalai Lama

Dear Editor: It was nice to read Father Frank Mann’s article (Aug. 2) about the Dalai Lama’s recent trip throughout the United States to share insights about mindfulness teaching.

During his trip, which received significant coverage in the international media, the Dalai Lama drew crowds throughout the country in places such as Seattle, Allentown, Pa., and eventually the Big Apple. In an age in which religious leaders pay lip service to dialogue between the faiths, it is nice to have such a prominent religious figure speak in such simple terms about the importance of compassion and charity towards others.

These are major components of Buddhist mindfulness and also the bedrock of what Our Lord preached in the hillsides of Israel 2,000 years ago.

In a complicated age of technological and economic advancement we suffer a detachment from the life-giving virtues of understanding and charity, which sustain our souls and truly bring us happiness. Even though our Savior preached kindness to strangers and enemies and charity to those in need, it is a challenge to live with those principles in mind.

Modern day spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama can offer a reminder of the benefits of simplicity in an increasingly complex and alienating world.

Thanks to The Tablet for printing this column and offering a perspective of another faith, with many social and moral teachings similar to Christianity.

Paul Esmond
Albany

Editor’s note: Mr. Esmond is a former parishioner at Our Lady of Angels in Bay Ridge.

Tough Love Method Works

Dear Editor: I appreciate Father Tadeusz’ column (Aug. 9) on addicts. I agree wholeheartedly with him. To open “safe injection sites” is ridiculous. It takes the personal responsibility away from the person who is making the poor choices in the first place.

Yes, drug addiction is terrible, for the addict and for those who care. However, we need to stop blaming the parents, the schools, the Church, the friends, the neighborhoods, etc., and demand that the addict takes personal responsibility for his/her own actions.

Tough love is one of the methods that works, not “safe injections sites.”

I learned the hard way, many, many times, with a loved one. You simply cannot help a drug addict who does not want to help himself. That’s a fact!

Allowing “safe injection sites”... how far will we continue to bend toward no personal responsibility and political correctness before we totally and irrevocably break?

K. Siuda
Greenpoint

‘14’ Has a Website

Dear Editor: The Aug. 9th edition of The Tablet contained a brief letter from Louis Romano, who had been a student at Fourteen Holy Martyrs School from 1967 to 1973.

I taught at “14” from 1956 to 1965. I taught several Romano children during that time and was friendly with the parents of these students.

I am in touch with several students and we do have a website. If Mr. Romano wishes to contact me and receive information regarding this website, he can do so at St. Gregory’s Convent, 88-19 Cross Island Pkwy., Bellerose, NY, 11426.

My religious name at that time was Sister Catherine James, OP.

Sister Diane Kirwan, OP
Bellerose

Mel Gibson Wasn’t Shunned

Dear Editor: I enjoyed reading Msgr. Fernando Ferrarese’s column (July 19) on the state of films today.

However, I cannot understand why he believes that Mel Gibson was “shunned” for what Msgr. Ferrarese calls “his daring portrayal of the passion of Christ.”

Gibson’s film played all over the world. I would hardly call that being “shunned.”

I also think it is odd that Msgr. Ferrarese considers Gibson’s film to be “daring” because it blames the Jews for the crucifixion of Christ instead of putting the blame on Pontius Pilate. That is a complete contradiction of what Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II said when they apologized to the Jewish people for the suffering they endured from the individuals who blamed them for the crucifixion.

John Francis Fox
Brooklyn

The Obama Factor

Dear Editor: I am responding to Carole Norris Greene’s column in The Tablet (Aug. 2) “Was the New Yorker Cover Fair Commentary?”

The writer obviously was upset with The New Yorker magazine and how it portrayed presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife. The writer was also concerned with what effects it may have on the young. I would like to say I’m more concerned with what Mr. Obama really stands for and what effect that has on young and old alike.

These are a few examples:

• He is co-sponsor of the Freedom of Choice Act,
• he opposes a ban on partial-birth abortion,
• he supports taxpayer funding of abortion,
• he opposes the parental notification law,
• he opposes protecting abortion survivors, and
• he supports pro-abortion judges for the Supreme Court.

Rosemary Mangino
Brooklyn

Courage of Humanae Vitae

Dear Editor: The brave move by The Tablet to revisit Humanae Vitae after 40 years involves many dangers already experienced in part and hopefully some opportunities yet to be fully realized. You’ve made a surprisingly good start on a tough subject.

Much of the Church in the pews, however, is too mature to be personally challenged by this coverage. Many of their own children, who are now infrequent attendees, have already heard only part of the message and ignored it, sometimes regretfully. But both generations should be on guard for their children, who are the constituency that will have to respond not only to the encyclical but to its hostile opposition, and the promiscuity engulfing us all in the media from TV to the Internet, whose sad effects are so brilliantly covered by Msgr. Scharfenberger’s article.

He links the moral, inhumane and indiscriminate devastation of today with the indiscriminate rejection of the encyclical’s more humane love reflective of the divine.

Unfortunately for us all, however, the natural law, a basis of the encyclical, doesn’t come naturally (easily) in today’s sorry milieu unless one is a victim (albeit voiceless in abortion, fearful in rape or more subtly contaminated by obscenity). Such victim-hood is simply often ignored. For the selfish victimizer, however, intent only on pleasure not responsibility (many of whom eventually become addicts), the efficacy of the natural law is almost non-existent. That law, even for the believer, can only persuade so far.

The doctrine of Christian love, however, as enunciated most recently by the pope and covered by Msgr. Scharfenberger and Phil Franco on Natural Family Planning (echoing natural law), et al., is a theme of compelling majesty that will attract alas only a minority of adherents initially. That shouldn’t preclude its enunciation. For it is a truly humanizing and divinizing concept of a more humane love.

We are clearly in some kind of seminal, if not end, time. It is up to our beloved Church now to project that doctrine of higher love in more compelling fashion not only by word, but example.

Jim O’Donnell
Flushing