‘Catholic’ Pro-Choicers

Peter Feuerherd's article (“Pro-lifers Still Reading Election Tea Leaves”) in the Dec. 22-28, 1996 Register extensively cites positions of Catholics for a Free Choice as if it is were a legitimate voice of Roman Catholics in the United States on the issue of abortion. The reporter should have known better.

Frances Kissling, the president of Catholics for a Free Choice, has repeatedly and publicly expressed contempt for the Magisterium of the Church. Given this stance, and her admission that she never attends Mass, calls her Catholicism into question.

Indeed, it is questionable whether she is even president of a recognizable organization: Catholics for a Free Choice is not a membership organization in the sense of the National Right to Life organization. It has virtually no members, merely serving as a useful front organization through which money and press releases can be funneled from pro-abortion organizations and other enemies of orthodox Christianity. And the secular press in America seems willing to quote any self-proclaimed Catholic leader to make a pro-abortion position seem reasonable even to Roman Catholics.

Tony Delserone

Owings Mills, Maryland

Christmas Minus Christ

How can we possibly restore morality to this country if the television network writers continue to vilify and ridicule religion?

A recent NBC Tuesday evening sitcom offered a good example of how television and movies have encouraged people to look at church-going as “not cool.” In a scene between husband and wife, the wife asked: “Honey, with the kids away for the holidays, we ought to do something meaningful for Christmas.” The husband, looking puzzled, replied: “You mean you want to drag me to church.” “No,” replied the wife, “I meant that perhaps we could take Mr. So-and-so on a buggy ride around the park.” To the writers of sitcoms, a ride around the park is “meaningful.” Going to church is not.

Al Restivo

La Canada Flintridge, California

Biblical Truth

It is unfortunate that most Christians, including most Catholics, don't have the advantage of balanced articles such as Gabriel Meyer's on the work of biblicists such as the Jesus seminar and Q project (“Jesus Seminar, Q Scholars True to Holiday Form,” Dec. 29, 1996). That puts them at the mercy of our culture, which automatically elevates scientists and scholars to authority figures, and of the major media, such as Time and Newsweek, that never miss a chance to publicize anything that sheds doubt on traditional Christianity. They get the drumbeat of dissonance between the Church's Magisterium of Revelation and the new, popularized competition—the magisterium of historical scholarship.

In the long run, the Church has nothing to fear from honest scholarship and science. Truth is one. Ultimately what is believed from those who handed it on and what is known through scholarly digging will converge. In the short run, the table is tilted toward the trumpeted findings of dishonest scholarship. Honest biblical scholarship must be bound by the creeds and open to the possibility that the evangelists portrayed Jesus accurately and that the Church is what she has always claimed to be. Judging from Meyer's article, it appears clear that the Jesus Seminar and Q guys don't seem to meet that test. Yet they go about “just doing their jobs,” eroding beliefs because they start from the premises that Christ could not be God, or the Bible inspired. Time and Newsweek trumpet every innovative hypothesis. And the little ones—that's most of us—caught between who to believe, grow more confused. On the brighter side, if the Q guys are right, we'll be able to whip through the Creed in nothing flat.

Burman Skrable

Fairfax, Virginia

Beautiful Gift

Star of the Nativity by Joseph Brodsky (Dec. 22- 28) was a beautiful gift to your readers. Apromise of more poetry to come, I hope.

Kathleen Gunton Deal

Orange, California