Bright Christmas Thanks

Dear Editor: May the peace of Our Lord be ever with us!

I wish to sincerely thank you for the generous donation you sent us from the Bright Christmas Campaign. Thanks to you, we were able to have extra funds to buy Christmas gifts for the children of our parish. I am sure they will be very happy when they open their gifts. I could just imagine their smiling faces and bright shining eyes!

May you have a Merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and peaceful New Year!

Father Joseph V. Agostino, C.M.
Pastor, St. John the Baptist Parish
Bedford-Stuyvesant

Dear Editor: It is with heartfelt gratitude that I write to thank you and the generous readers of The Tablet for the recent gift to Providence House. What a wonderful gift to share with the women and children we serve during this blessed season of Christmas!

At the heart of the Providence House mission is creating communities and transforming lives. The women and children who are at our residences have very little in material goods. But, they receive an abundant amount of love from so many generous donors who support our mission. This is evidenced in a very special way by our benefactors like The Tablet who, year after year, respond with open and generous hearts.

I pray for many blessings, peace and good health for you and all of your readers during the Christmas season and New Year.

Thank you again for your generous support.

Sister Janet Kinney, C.S.J.
Executive Director
Brooklyn

Dear Editor: On behalf of the children and families in the Dorothy Bennett Mercy Center I wish to express our gratitude for the generous donation we received from your Bright Christmas Fund.

Our After-School Program provides a safe haven for 50 children in our center located in the Convent of Mercy Garden. Homework assistance, music, art and fun time are all part of their experience here. Adult education consists of Computer Literacy and English as a Second Language.

Please be assured of our grateful prayers.

Sister Kathleen Quinn, R.S.M.
Executive Director
Brooklyn

Dear Editor: Thank you and please thank your readers for their very generous “Bright Christmas Fund” gift for the children of Our Lady of Presentation parish.

Because of their kindness and caring, there will be many more happy smiling faces this Christmas.

I will remember you and all of your readers at the altar during Midnight Mass that God may bless all of you with good health and happiness on Christmas and that He will give you a great ’08.

Msgr. Joseph A. Nugent
Pastor, Our Lady of the Presentation Church
Brownsville

The Kennedy Legacy 

Dear Editor: The deification of John F. Kennedy has been going on for decades now, and it is no less objectionable when exercised by Catholics. Even saints, as they would be the first to remind us, do not merit deification. A reader recently fawned over Kennedy as a man who won a huge electoral victory, kept us safe during the missile crisis, and apparently even walked on water: “though he had terrible back pain, he carried men through miles of water to an island for safety.”

Political mythologies can only be sustained by manipulations of history which only exist for purposes of manipulating the present. Progressives are fond of making icons of those who progressives identify as progressive, for no other reason than their very names invoke favorable memories. And everyone knows progressives represent the good, and those resistant to progress represent the bad, right? After all, if we absorb the wisdom of, well, celebrities for example, we know that progressives are all about creating utopia which will make us all trustful and loving and just and playful and happy, even while we discard burdensome lives, and somehow prosperous, once the producers of wealth are taxed to nonexistence, and, of course, tolerant, except towards those who still believe in outmoded things like moral guilt. 

Kennedy’s life, like that of us all, was surely a mixture of noble purpose and wisdom combined with lapses in personal character. He acted heroically in the face of disaster during war, but habitually exercised the slack seamanship that placed his men in danger in the first place. He was actually elected by the narrowest margin in American history, a margin that would not have existed at all without the undoubted voter fraud provided by the corrupt Democratic machine in Chicago, a fraud he was well aware of. His lowering of corporate taxes did not make him forget his first hand knowledge of the potential corruptions of wealth and power, but he knew also that businesses are usually entities of thousands of people whose interest is never served by industrial bankruptcies to be replaced by the far worse corruptions of government bureaucracies.

What Kennedy did during his moments of real leadership, was allow his natural conservative values to have a voice. Not since Coolidge before him and Reagan after him did an American President remind us that America’s understanding of human rights are divine endowments, expressed in the Declaration of Independence. In his inaugural address he reminded us that he had just “sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.” He went on to reassert the Declaration’s premise that we are all “endowed by (our) Creator with certain unalienable rights” by saying that “the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe: The belief that the rights of man come not at all from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” On balance, he was a conservative president who would be castigated by almost every religion hating liberal were he to have been the same man in contemporary America.

Albert Sheleng
Bayside

Robertson’s ‘Awful Mistake’

Dear Editor: I’d like to share my opinion after having read the letter endorsing Pat Robertson by Sammy Sanseverino (Dec. 9).

First, when a politician says he/she is personally opposed to abortion, it is a typical pro-abortion line used on Catholics or other Christians to try and get their vote.
If someone was personally opposed to abortion, he/ she could never be for it in public life. They would know the truth about abortion and their conscience would not allow them to be.

I have never heard Mr. Giuliani say anything in defense of unborn children or the Pro-Life Movement other than a quick statement saying he “hates abortion” and again I ask how can he hate abortion when he supported it in every way, shape and form in public life? When he says he will appoint only conservative judges to the Supreme Court, I say only God knows that and what I think we should do is say ‘No’ to Mr. Giuliani as he says ‘No’ to God and pray for the candidate that will respect the Word of the Lord and all unborn babies especially those in danger of abortion.

In this Christmas season give these prayers to the miraculous Infant Jesus.

Last but not least I pray that Pat Robertson comes back to his senses and realizes that awful mistake he has made.

Rosemary Mangino
Bensonhurst

Where Are All the Men?

Dear Editor: The chart (Dec. 15), Gender Distribution of Mass Attending Catholics, is “quite dramatic” because it does not have a base line of zero and so greatly distorts the Mass attendance difference between men and women.   Looking at the chart as it is, one might conclude that there are eight times as many women attending Mass than men when in fact there are less than twice as many women (65%) attending than men (35%). Setting the base line at zero rather than 32% would correctly demonstrate the difference.

Robert J. Giugliano
Brooklyn