Plaudits From Father Pavone

I wish to thank the Register for the article “Meeting Pro-Life Standards Gets Harder for Candidates” (Sept. 29-Oct. 5). The moral question of working for “imperfect legislation,” which stops some but not all abortions, comes up constantly in my work with Priests for Life, as it did when I worked at the Vatican.

There are actually two questions here that often get confused. One is moral and the other is strategic. The moral question is, “May we work for legislation that protects some but not all babies?” The answer is, “Yes, under certain circumstances.” Those circumstances include [the times when] the legislative proposal is actually advancing protection for the unborn to the maximum degree possible at the time. If, when all abortions are already legal, we do everything possible to make as many of them as possible illegal, the ones that remain legal do not remain legal because of us. They remain legal because of those who made them legal in the first place. But, for us, to reduce an evil is, in fact, a good.

The strategic question is different. It asks, “Is an incremental approach the best way to reach our ultimate goal?” That question can only be answered with experience and should be discussed with a healthy respect between those who disagree. What we need to keep in mind as we work it out is that different answers to that question do not make anyone less “pro-life” than anyone else.

FATHER FRANK PAVONE

Staten Island, New York

The writer is director of Priests for Life.

‘Exceptions’: Strategic Disaster

Your discussion on the morality of “exceptions” in pro-life legislative efforts (“Meeting Pro-Life Standards Gets Harder for Candidates,” Sept. 29-Oct. 5), deserves further comment.

First, the section commonly cited in Evangelium Vitae that apparently supports the use of exceptions must be read in the context of the sentence that immediately precedes it: “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to … vote for it” (73.2). Laws containing exceptions for cases of rape, incest or allegedly to save the mother's life are “intrinsically unjust” because they explicitly “permit abortion.” When can we vote for them? “Never.” Therefore, when the Holy Father later refers to the permissibility of “proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law,” he does not mean these intrinsically unjust exceptions.

Second, though the author of your piece cites cardinals O'Connor and Gagnon to defend the moral permissibility of supporting exceptions in legislation, cardinals Krol, Manning, Cody and Medeiros were of the opposite opinion when testifying before a Senate subcommittee in 1974. All four declined to endorse a constitutional amendment recognizing the personhood of all children from the moment of conception that contained a life of the mother exception. Speaking on their behalf, Cardinal Medeiros stated that they “could not endorse any wording that would allow for direct abortion”; and that “the Catholic Conference does not endorse such an approach in principle and could not conscientiously support it.”

Third, in his book The Winning Side, professor Charles Rice shows logically and statistically how support for exceptions in legislation and for politicians who support them has been gravely detrimental to the pro-life cause. When the common definition of “pro-life” is diluted to mean support for the legal killing of some pre-born boys and girls (rape, incest, etc.), Rice shows how these policies have reinforced “the trend toward public acceptance of legalized abortion.” Support for exceptions is not a position “just short of perfection,” but one that is fundamentally flawed. If the law can tolerate the direct killing of some innocents, then it can tolerate the killing of many.

It is practically indisputable that this strategy of permitting the killing of some “exceptional” babies has been a disaster over the last 30 years. When pro-lifers take the time to look closer, they will find that supporting the lie of exceptions can never lead to a cultural affirmation of truth.

PATRICK DELANEY

Stafford, Virginia

The writer is assistant director of public policy at American Life League.

To Each His Own School

Daria Sockey's “Musings of a Home Schooling Mom” (Sept. 22-28) implies that there is a fundamental divide between those who home school and those who don't. This is a divide that doesn't have to exist.

I choose to send my children to a parochial school while my best friend in another state home schools her two youngest children. Each of us sees the advantages and disadvantages of both methods. If she lived here, she would probably send her kids to parochial school, and if I lived there I would most likely be home schooling, too.

My friend isn't “a bore” because she's constantly obsessing over her children's curriculum, and I am not constantly worrying about my kids' “souls and psyches.” We both wonder why our otherwise-intelligent second-graders cannot seem to remember that 8 plus 5 equals 13. We compare notes on how we're preparing our daughters for first Communion. We obsess over whether our sons should start kindergarten this year or next year. She sees the way my son has come out of his shell since he started school and wishes it for her son. I see the way her daughter zips through two years of phonics in one year and wish it for my daughter. But we both realize that, in time, they will end up in the same place.

I am surprised that anyone would think that I am “delegating the precious task of passing on the Catholic faith” by sending my kids to parochial school. I don't expect any school to pass on the faith to them; I expect their school to reinforce and supplement what we are doing at home. Pope John Paul II's “Letter to Families” is often quoted as an argument for home schooling because it states that parents are to be the primary educators of their children. The same letter also tells us that “parents by themselves are not capable of satisfying every requirement of the whole process of raising children, especially in matters concerning their schooling.”

Of course my husband and I are the first and most important educators of our children, but that does not mean we have to be the ones teaching them long division. I'll readily admit that we have delegated that not-so-precious task.

I don't see my children's friendships at school as “relentless peer influence,” and I'm not worried about teachers who occasionally teach things I don't agree with. It gives me an opportunity to teach my children to think through issues based on their own faith and morals. I am confident that the foundation they've received at home will allow them to counter any outside influence.

Catholic parents have many options for educating their children. I fully respect and support those who home school, and I hope they respect my decision as well. We should all work together to raise a generation of faith-filled Catholics.

LYNN BETE

Beavercreek, Ohio