Praising La Leche

Your Dec. 28-Jan. 3 issue was great! The Culture of Life section had a great article on breastfeeding—the one featuring the Kippleys (“A Baby at Its Mother's Breast”). Then there was the lovely article about the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche (“A Holy Site for Mothers Present and Future”).

The world, especially the Catholic world, needs to read these things. The Kippleys, especially Sheila, have done a super job of encouraging natural child spacing through breastfeeding. I can attest to the fact that it truly works, as we have really “spaced out” children, with 25 years between the oldest and the youngest of our 11 —all due only to breastfeeding.

It's about time the American Academy of Pediatrics came around to recognizing the many benefits of breastfeeding and speaking out about them. But there was one notable omission in these articles! As a co-founder of La Leche League (LLL), I wondered why there was no mention of our organization at all. LLL celebrated its 40th anniversary this past summer and through the years has been the primary influence on the spread of breastfeeding throughout the world. Our organization took its name from the very shrine you wrote of—Our Lady of La Leche.

Dr. Herbert Ratner was in fact the founding father of LLL, having encouraged us right from the beginning. I hope you will see fit to give us just a bit of credit for our part in living and sharing, mother-to-mother, this integral part of God's plan for mothers. Thanks to Dr. Ratner, who was my husband's mentor from medical school on, I nursed our babies and our children have nursed all of theirs (all 47 of them)! Now we have three breastfed great—grand-children for which to be thankful. All this, I am convinced, is due to the influence of La Leche League.

Mary White River Forest, Illinois

Papal ‘Opinion’

Mark Shea's otherwise edifying article, “What is the Official Catholic Teaching on…?” (Jan. 25-31), contains certain imprecisions that may lead readers to erroneous conclusions about the Church's exercise of authority.

First, in his attempt to reduce historical Church teaching on capital punishment to “prudential judgments … which the Church asks the faithful to consider seriously as they form their own consciences,” Shea effectively nullifies the weight of Catholic tradition—grounded in revelation—affirming that the practice is morally licit. Far from silencing those who claim that Evangelium Vitae represents a “change” in the Church's traditional teaching, Shea's superficial summary of John Paul II's words would hearten them by characterizing the Pope's “opinion” as contrary to the tradition, rather than what it really is: an implicit confirmation of capital punishment's moral permissibility, coupled with a call for Catholics to choose mercy over justice as a witness to the Culture of Death.

My point is not to weigh in on the death penalty debate, but to avoid the kind of minimalist approach to the teaching authority of the Church, and especially the Pope, which might follow from Shea's article. Readers would do well to examine Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, which states that “loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given … to the specific teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra.…”

Moreover, Shea's characterization of a teaching contained in a papal encyclical as “opinion of the Pope” could very well give heart to dissenters from the teaching of another papal encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which expressed clearly the Church's teaching on the intrinsic moral evil of the contraceptive act. While every teaching of every encyclical is not automatically considered infallible, those which, as Humanae Vitae does, make a claim to the constant and unchanging teaching of the Church from apostolic times, invoke the authority of sacred tradition, and as such are to be adhered to not as opinions but as the Church's official—and non-negotiable—teaching. No matter what William F. Buckley thinks about it.

Todd Aglialoro Gaming, Austria