An Urgent Message from Fr. Owen Kearns LC, Publisher

Letters 11.02.2008

November 2-8, 2008 Issue | Posted 10/28/08 at 12:23 PM

‘45 Million-Plus Issues’

“What Voter Are You?” was posed in your Oct. 26 editorial. I know what kind I am. When I visited the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website, I came across pro-life quotes from Pope Benedict XVI, including this one: “God’s love does not differentiate between the newly conceived infant still in his or her mother’s womb and the child or young person, or the adult and the elderly person. God does not distinguish between them because he sees an impression of his own image and likeness (Genesis 1:26) in each one.”

On Election Day I will be voting pro-life, because I am a “45 million-plus issues” voter. You see, more than 45 million unborn babies have been killed since Roe v. Wade (1973), which is far more than the American lives we have lost in wars since 1973.

Beverly Moran

Corinth, New York

Voting for the Unborn

As I read “Defending Pius XII” (Oct. 5), I found myself wondering if someday I will read “Defending the American Catholic Church.” Someday the devil will be defeated, and people will look back — much as we have looked back at those that perpetrated the Jewish Holocaust and American slavery — and ask, “How was it possible that this genocide of 50 million American unborn occurred?”

American Catholics, at 24% of the population, have the power to stop abortion, but gravely, through misguided voting, we allow the defenseless to remain defenseless. Before voting for a pro-abortion candidate, I ask all people to truly visualize and sincerely pray for the 3,000 innocent American children who have been massacred through barbaric procedures every day in our country since 1973. As hard as this astronomical number of dead children is to visualize, it is even more impossible to understand.

How can you pull that lever?

Peter Michael Bleyer, M.D.

Gardnerville, Nevada

Modern Holocaust

In the Oct. 19 Vatican “Media Watch” brief “Rabbi Tells Synod: ‘We Can’t Forget,’” Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen states that great religious leaders during World War II didn’t raise their voices to save his brethren, but kept silent and helped secretly only. Since he was speaking to the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican, it was evident he included Pope Pius XII. It is true that the whole world cannot forget the Holocaust. The estimated number of victims who died is 6 million. When we think about the death camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau and others, we are horrified at what took place there.

But now it’s 2008, and we in the U.S. have our own holocaust. From 1973 to 2005, more that 45 million babies have died in our “death camps” (abortion clinics), but unlike the mothers who went into the Nazi death camps pregnant and died with their babies, our young mothers come out alive. Most likely the generations to come will make the same accusation as Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen, asking why we did not raise our voices to save the unborn, and why we were silent while our government said it was legal to eliminate them.

Jim B. Muir

Sequim, Washington

No. 1 Life Issue

More than a “Teaching Moment” (Sept. 21) is needed. I have been active in the respect-life apostolate since 1985. I have marched in Washington, D.C., this past January and taken part in the St. Louis Rosary March for a number of years. I have studied the issue from every possible dimension. I have written on it and explained it on the radio for 22 years. I am convinced that on this issue the Church is her own worst enemy because of her persistence in promoting opposition to abortion as just one of many important life issues. This has hurt the pro-life effort tremendously. It has allowed almost 90% of our Catholic politicians to use it as a shield against their Church and their own consciences.

William A. Borst, Ph.D.

Feature Editor, Mindszenty Report

St. Louis, Missouri

Unwelcome Guest

I am a Jewish pro-life woman and was very saddened that Sen. Obama was an honored guest at the Al Smith dinner on Oct. 16 (“Catholic Dinner’s Guests,” Oct. 26). What kind of message does it send when the most pro-abortion politician in the United States — a man to the left of NARAL — has a place of honor at a major Catholic event?

This could have been an opportunity for Cardinal Egan to denounce abortion on demand, but instead, as they say, “a good time was had by all.” I am concerned: If we have the misfortune of an Obama-Biden presidency, we will have the signing of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions and mean a return to partial-birth abortion and the revocation of all parental-notification and consent laws, which have done so much to reduce the high abortion rate in the U.S. All voters of good will should be afraid of an Obama presidency.

Obama is the man who stated that if one of his daughters were to become pregnant, he “would not want her punished with a baby.” That sentence tells us all we need to know about the man.

Alice Lemos

Woodside, New York

ACORN Analysis

I got the Oct. 12 print Register and read Father Kearn’s piece about the website improvements and immediately checked the daily blog for the presence of a news item to see what the Register said about it. Nothing.

I was watching EWTN’s “The World Over” with Raymond Arroyo over the weekend, and he mentioned that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had donated over $1 million of our money to ACORN, a left-wing organization in the news closely connected to the Fannie Mae disaster, voter registration fraud and the subject of 13 state indictments. Apparently there has been no comment from the bishops’ conference.

So where is the Register on this? I know you have been awfully nice to the bishops lately and have cut them much slack, but enough is enough. It sure seems the bishops’ conference has zero accountability because we are afraid to be critical, lest we not be faithful. Let’s get some facts here and report it.

Looking forward, I’m hearing that the bishops’ conference is suddenly frightened over an expected Obama presidency and a Democratic-led Congress and doesn’t know what to do. Gee, I wonder why they are now frightened. Maybe you could help enlighten us, particularly if the so-called Catholic vote is again a dud.

Tom Frederick

Vero Beach, Florida

Editor’s note: We hope you checked the blog again on Oct. 16 to see the ACORN-Catholic Campaign for Human Development story reported, and we hope you saw the story on the same topic in our Oct. 26 issue (“ACORN’s Collection Plate Money”). Our reporter did get comments from the bishop who oversees the Catholic Campaign and its lay director.

Right Name

It was hard to do, but Willard M. Oliver managed to write 28 hefty paragraphs on the priest sexual abuse issue without once using the word “homosexual” (“Priest Abuse Revisited,” Oct. 19). I hope that doesn’t reflect the John Jay update itself.

The original John Jay report revealed that more than 80% of the abuse cases examined were homosexual in nature. To divert attention from the real problem, many writers and speakers with an agenda have painted this whole crisis with the “pedophilia” brush. To his credit, Oliver pointed out that only 2.2% of cases fell into this category.

Unless Catholics face this scandalous outrage squarely, there is little hope of preventing future abuse cases. That includes calling the perpetrators by their right name.

F. Douglas Kneibert

Sedalia, Missouri

Usury?

The subhead “Usury” in the Oct. 12 editorial “Money, Vices and Virtues” is just plain wrong. No wonder the vast majority of our Catholic leaders have a naive, wrongheaded, antibusiness, pro-Democratic bias. You wrote: “… it’s the unjust charging of interest such that a customer is being asked to pay twice for a product.” You have just said no American could ever afford a house. If you paid only 5% interest on a home loan, you would pay double its price in 15 years. If you paid only 2.4% interest (impossible) you would pay double in 30 years. That’s usury?

I hope your paper’s business manager understands this subject better than you.   

Fred Holzweiss

Englewood, Florida

Editor’s note: Traditionally, lenders asked for a significant percentage of a loan as a down payment, with the rest paid off in 15 years. Eventually, lenders introduced 30-year loans, and then zero-down 30-year loans, then adjustable arm zero-down 30-year loans. At what point do interest structures cross a moral line? It’s a question open for debate. But zero-down loans wrecked homes because they couldn’t be repaid, then laid waste to banks that traded in mortgage-backed securities, and then tanked the economy. You don’t want us to call that “usury.” Okay — but what’s a better word for it?

Correction

The Oct. 5 article “NASA Catholics Mark 50 Years” misidentified Kevin Chilton in the “Spacemen” photo lineup. This is a photo of Gen. Chilton of the U.S. Air Force when he was an astronaut. The Register regrets this error.

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