Letters to the Editor
Where Are the Women?
In your August 14-20 issue there are two articles that go together. The first is the article “China Is Becoming Mostly Male.” This points out that, because of China's one-child policy and estimated 25 million young men might remain single for life. The second, “Church Spearheads Fight Against Sex-Selective Abortions,” has to do with sex-selective abortions in India where because of preference for male children, female children are being aborted.
In the article on India, it is said that the ratio in 2001 was 1,000 men to 929 women. This means that, for every 1,929 people there will be 71 men who might remain single for life. If my math is correct, if we divide 1,929 people into the 1 billion people in India and multiply it by 71, we will come up with a figure of approximately 36.7 million men who might remain single for life.
It would seem to me that, in addition to the Church and female organizations fighting this injustice, they should enlist the aid of men by publishing the fact that so many of them will never have the opportunity to get married, raise a family and have a son to perform his last rites.
GERARD P. MCEVOY
Coram, New York
A Matter of Degree?
I am confused by the editorial “Guarding the Flock” (Sept. 4-10), as to what the policy of the Church is, or should be, regarding ordaining homosexuals to the priesthood.
You write that psychologists say that there are two types of men with homosexual feelings: those with “transient” experiences of homosexual feelings and “men who have a much stronger inclination.”
Are there only two types of homosexual inclinations — “transient” and “strong”? No weak or moderate homosexual inclinations? Your editorial reads as though you equated a “strong” homosexual with one who participates in “Gay-Pride” marches. What would you call homosexuals who don't participate in those degrading marches?
Does being “transient” at some point in one's life mean that they will never have “strong” or “transient” homosexual inclinations again?
One of the reasons for the Church's sex-abuse scandal was that bishops put aside their common sense and believed psychologists that they had cured priests who had sexually abused young boys, only to find the “cured” priests repeated their sexual abuse. Certainly those with strong homosexual inclinations should not be ordained — but what about those homosexuals who have less than strong inclinations?
We need to use common sense in “guarding the flock,” not the latest musings of psychologists, nor the overindulgent impractical charity of some of the hierarchy. Parents are not going to expose their children to priests with any hint of homosexuality. If bishops persist in ordaining homosexuals, they will drive Mass attendance even lower.
JOHN NAUGHTON
Silver Spring, Maryland
Catholics Playing Catch-Up
In Father Anthony Zimmerman's letter of Sept 4-10 (“God's Hand and Evolution”), he rightly points out that there is no scientific proof that life has evolved from non-living matter. Unfortunately, he admits at the end of his letter that he accepts evolution himself, with certain qualifications to allow for God's intervention. This is basically the theory of theistic evolution.
But there is no scientific proof whatever for any sort of evolution, which after all these years is still just a theory. It has never been demonstrated that one species has evolved from another species. There is absolutely no fossil evidence for any of the “missing links” in either plant or animal life. God created each plant and animal “according to its kind.”
Nowhere in Scripture does it say or imply that God employed survival of the fittest, death, violence and natural selection in order to create us by some kind of evolutionary process.
We in the Catholic Church are so afraid of another “Galileo incident” that we are bending over backwards to accommodate evolution to Christianity. For this reason it is our Protestant brethren who are in the forefront of the creationism and intelligent-design movements, much to the shame of Catholic scholarship.
FRANK M. REGA
Millsboro, Delaware
Navigating New Mexico
I have just read “Radio Wired In to the New Evangelization” by Tim Drake (Aug. 21-27). While it was a good article, there was a glaring error when he mentioned that “Immaculate Heart Radio … will be launching its newest station in the Diocese of Albuquerque in September.”
There is no “Diocese of Albuquerque.” The city of Albuquerque is in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe (even though Albuquerque is the larger of the two cities).
Thank you for your wonderful paper. I do enjoy it every week. As a matter of fact, as I read the above article, our diocesan newspaper, The West Texas Catholic, was announcing the buying of a radio station for Amarillo, Texas (Diocese of Amarillo) that will be broadcasting as a Catholic station.
MSGR. JOE E. BIXENMAN
Immaculate Conception Church
Perryton, Texas
Rare Reasoning
The CNS article “Pro-Lifers Confer on Death Penalty” in the (Aug. 21-27) could lead people to believe that the Church condemns the use of capital punishment in all circumstances. The following from the Catechism of the Catholic Church clearly states that this is not the case:
No. 2267: “Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
“If however, non lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.
“Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm — without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself — the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically non-existent.’”
JOSEPH A. HAHN
Hampshire, Illinois
Straddling Silliness
The Aug. 7-13 commentary by Catherine and Michael Pakaluk, “Effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Still Being Felt,” bordered on being silly. The “blame America first” people seem to overlook the good coming from America, only to dwell on the “sins” of America.
And when they support people in elections who place politics before the Word of God, they encourage abortion, phony marriages and a plethora of sins against all of humanity as well as God. If you check the numbers, many more humans were killed by abortion than by any bomb. This is the great sin.
When checking the Bible, I could not find the “Book of Trade-offs.”
JIM BARTOSCH
Scottsdale, Arizona
Let Repentance Begin With Me
I was reading the Aug. 21-27 issue of the Register. I would like to applaud your courage with the editorial about the atomic bomb, naming it a sin (“After Hiroshima”). Thank you for letting us know how the popes have condemned the use of the bomb and all wanton destruction of civilians
To those angry readers I would suggest that loving a person or a country does not negate but, in fact, requires holding them to account. Do you correct your own spouse or someone else's spouse? Does it make sense for me to chide another country's president or my own? If we can criticize them about abortion, why not about immoral weapons?
I don't think the point is to make people feel guilty, but to keep such horrors as Hiroshima and Nagasaki from happening again. And also perhaps to call us all, me included, to repentance for hateful and vengeful thoughts in our hearts.
Responding to “Atonement and the A-Bomb” (multiple letters, Aug. 21-27): Jesus himself did talk about judgment against the cities of Bethsaida and Chorazin (see Matthew 11:20-24), and of whom did he approve? Not the towns of his people, but of Nineveh, whose citizens repented en masse in sackcloth and ashes.
VICKIE HOFFMANN
Bethesda, Maryland
Slow Bombs Away
Pertinent to “After Hiroshima” (Aug. 21-27):
Consider this: Population control worldwide effectively constitutes a huge, slow-action, death-ray neutron bomb — one that eliminates people through attrition while leaving property and infrastructure intact.
The wholesale destruction of cities during World War II was but the prelude to the unimaginable scale of violence happening today.
A psychological and semantic chasm has opened between those of us sanctioning the wholesale elimination of the “unwanted,” unborn and those being “terminated” either chemically or in clinics.
We have met the enemy, and he is us as we muffle the silent screams of those millions slain in the womb.
ROBERT J. BONSIGNORE
Brooklyn, New York
