Choice for Vice President

Dear Editor: God bless John McCain for choosing the best nominee for Vice President, Gov. Sarah Palin. With the strong Pro-Life platform of the Republican Party, the pre-born have victory in sight. God is good!

Plus, she can out-fish, shoot and hunt any man. Extra plus, she is excellent at basketball. Look out, Barack!

Pro-Life, Pro-Gun, Pro-Family, and Pro-Drilling!! Wow! And if all goes well and McCain and Palin are elected, God willing, Gov. Palin will be president of the United States Senate, giving her the power to cast any tie-breaking vote.

God is giving us the opportunity to save America. 

Gene Cosgriff
Staten Island

Dear Editor: Alaska was called “Seward’s Folly,” but the Secretary of State was vindicated when gold was discovered in the Yukon.
Will Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, be McCain’s Folly, and what can possibly vindicate him in his strange choice for a vice presidential running mate?

Michael J. Gorman
Whitestone

Stay-at-Home Moms at Risk

Dear Editor: I am pleased that a number of professional women have found peace and satisfaction in staying home to care for hearth and home. (The Housewife Makes A Comeback, Aug. 30.) I, myself, did that for more than a decade. I wanted to have time for my husband, two young children and a 26-year-old autistic son.

However, I would advise these women to closely guard their professional networks through friendships and/or part-time jobs. We may want to live our faiths fully and completely as housewives and totally donate ourselves to the people we care for.

But, in our time and age, the rest of the world does not look so admirably at women who have stayed home for some time, regardless of their former employment or educational achievements. I learned this when I finally really had the occasion and needed to go back to the workforce.

The research science realm will not take back a Ph.D. who has been ‘idle’ and ‘outdated,’ so I took courses to get certified as a biology teacher. Everyone is screaming about the ‘shortage’ of science and math teachers!! Certified last year, I am still, now, unable to get a permanent position even in schools that seem to be kind enough to employ young, uncertified teachers but not a middle-aged housewife/ex-scientist trying to support her still young children.

In a recent job fair, I met a few others like me. Can I manage a class? As well as anyone else can!! Can I teach science? Better than most!! Do I have a network of contacts? I applied to all the teachers’ websites. But no, I do not have personal insider contacts. No, not a single one. 

Throughout all this ordeal, I received help from no agency, secular or religious, but only from one priest. Only from this one person. No one else has the time to care. Everyone is busy working. The cross really gets overheavy most times.

Name withheld
Fresh Meadows

Such Disregard for Children

Dear Editor: I have only sent one letter to The Tablet in my entire life. That letter was one of hope and joy. It was about the March for Life in Washington, D.C., in January, 2007. Today I feel a need to send another letter, which is totally the opposite of my last one.

On Monday, Aug. 18, my husband and I were praying the Rosary at the All Women’s Medical Pavilion on Austin St. in Forest Hills. We have been doing this for many years, and every time we go, we see such sadness and hopelessness in the myriad of young girls who enter this abortion site.

On this particular day, something out of the ordinary happened. As we were praying the Rosary, a woman (probably in her 40s) was pushing a baby stroller with two pedigree dogs sitting in it. She stopped in front of us, and I expected her to carry on about the rights of women to choose an abortion, but instead she asked us to mind her two dogs in the stroller while she entered the abortion mill to discard some garbage that she had.

When she came out she was very indignant about all the women in there who were killing their babies. She proceeded to tell us that her husband and she practiced birth control all their married life because they could not afford a child. She explained that she got her master’s degree at St. John’s University, had just written a book and would be on Oprah. She then walked down the street pushing her two little dogs in the stroller.

At the moment it happened, I thought it was a big joke. The scene was ridiculous and unbelievable. Thinking of this later, I realized that this was just as sad as the young girls and women going into this building to kill their own flesh and blood. What has gotten into our society that we would choose to discard and eliminate children from our life?

Looking back to the 1960s, I can now appreciate what Pope Paul VI did for the Church concerning birth control. What he predicted has come to pass, and may God have mercy on us all.

Laurana Heery
Flushing

Adulterous Affairs

Dear Editor: I write to express my agreement with your editorial (Aug. 16) concerning John Edwards’ adultery. You’re correct, “the real story is that adultery is a sin against the sixth commandment, even in 2008.” You’re right in saying that, “our age persists in its self-delusion that sex can be separated from responsibility toward family.”

It’s sad to say that this delusion was going on even 30 years ago when John McCain committed adultery. Like Edwards, who cheated on his wife after she got cancer, McCain cheated on his wife after she’d been badly injured in a car accident. McCain eventually divorced his wife and only a few weeks later married the much younger woman he’d been cheating on her with.

At least a pregnancy didn’t occur during McCain’s infidelity, as it appears it may have in Edwards’ case. But, as you point out, would pregnancy even be a concern “when an abortionist would always be at the ready”?

While McCain calls himself pro-life, as recently as 1999 he’s said that “certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade.”

Matt Moses
New Haven, Conn.

Father Bell’s Olympian Feat

Dear Editor: My sister Eileen always passes along articles from The Tablet that have anything to do with my favorite sport – track & field. I just returned from Beijing, where I worked with NBC on its coverage of T&F.

Along with many of my friends in the sport, I occasionally hear about someone who has “stretched the truth” (to be kind) when it comes to relating their achievements in the sport to friends and co-workers. When I began to read Ed Wilkinson’s column (Aug. 2) on Father John D. Bell and his reputation as an Olympian, I thought to myself, “Here we go again!” But there is some truth to Father Bell’s story. While he did not compete at the 1924 Olympics (according to my reference books), he did finish sixth in the Steeplechase event at that year’s U.S. Olympic Trials, which were held in Cambridge, Mass., (only the top three finishers qualified for the Olympics).

It’s quite possible that there was no attempt on anyone’s part to “stretch the truth”, but rather the story might have evolved over the years, where Olympic Trials became, simply, the Olympics. 

Based on this line from the St. Bonaventure site, it’s possible that Father Bell did wear a U.S. uniform at this meet:

“Member, U.S. Track and Field Team, Dublin, Ireland Third Place, 3,000 Meter Steeplechase 1924.” It’s also possible that he traveled with the U.S. team to the Paris Olympics as an “alternate.”

Walter Murphy
Briarwood

P.S. I am looking forward to joining my sisters, Eileen and Teresa, and my brother, Pete, at the 100th anniversary celebration of our grammar school, Brooklyn’s St. Francis of Assisi, in October.