To the editor:
We are shocked to read in the Alliance Defending Freedom HHS Mandates Fact Sheet, page 2, (http://www.alliancedefendingfreedom.org/content/docs/facts/ObamaCare-and-its-Mandates.pdf) that children ages 0-26 will receive contraception, sterilization, and abortion with no parental notification.
Please be aware that this provision will cause untold harm and death to all families under Obamacare.
To the editor:
This is in regard to the recent article (January 24) by Deacon Greg Kandra on bringing back Communion rails in church. You’ve got to be kidding! Do you really think that will fix the problem mentioned and make all people more holy? I don’t think so.
Holiness begins with learning of one’s religion and what is in our hearts. It should begin with teaching children about the Church, the sacraments, and how to be respectful to others.
To the editor:
I want to thank the Catholic Herald for running the excellent article on Pope Leo XIII’s assessment of socialism as evil. It truly is.
Socialism, with its tempting allure of equality, has not produced equality, only poverty, repression, and death. Socialism has manifested itself worldwide in many forms and variants, but always with a similar end result of poverty and death.
Whether it was the millions killed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the genocide of Hitler’s German Socialist Workers Party, or the mass desert graveyards of Saddam Hussein’s Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party in Iraq, the result is always the same.
To the editor:
As a former student of Sandy Hook Elementary School who still lives in Sandy Hook today, I am saddened at the tragedy that occurred. It is devastating that so many innocent children’s lives were taken before they had their first day of middle school, their first day behind the wheel, their first time falling in love — so many firsts that these children will never experience.
On January 25, hundreds of thousands of people who have achieved these milestones were going to “March for Life” in Washington for another group of people who have not been given the opportunity to experience their most important first — their first breath.
To the editor:
In response to last week’s disturbing column by Stephen Kent and the need to change the Second Amendment, it should be pointed out that all of America’s problems — slavery, the relocation of Native Americans, prohibition, concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, undeclared wars, and Roe v. Wade — occurred when we ignored or “improved” the Constitution.
Even more curious is the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statement that guns are too easily accessible. Were it not for the Second Amendment, there would be no Catholic Herald, a Conference of Catholic Bishops, or even Catholics, for that matter, since we would long ago have been hunted down like rats, just like in the mother country of Merrie Olde England.
To the editor:
Tony Magliano’s reflections on Pope Benedict’s Day of Peace message in the January 10 Catholic Herald is relevant to this time and place. As noted by the pope, inequality has been increasing for decades as a result of selfish and individualistic deregulation of financial markets.
Deregulation caused the financial crisis of 2008 and recession. Millions lost their jobs, families lost their homes, and $16 trillion in household wealth evaporated. But since then, 93 percent of new wealth has accrued to the richest one percent.
A week later followed the economic column in the Catholic Herald by Anthony Esolen about some of Pope Leo XIII’s views on socialism in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. The pope denounced socialism because it deprives working people of the gains of their wages in the form of private property.
To the editor:
My heroine, Nellie Gray, founder of the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., died August 13, 2012. I mourn and celebrate her death.
Mourn, because of her death after being a beacon of inspiration to all who respect human life, from conception to natural death. Celebrate, because Nellie has come to her Heavenly reward where she can sing, dance, and praise God forever.
To the editor:
Please accept my thanks for the Catholic Herald coverage of the Capitol Rosary Rally marking the 40th sorrowful anniversary of Roe v. Wade on January 12, 2013.
We estimate almost 150 people praying at the Capitol and St. Patrick’s and with us on their own that day.
As the speakers stated, this is a spiritual battle.
To the editor:
On December 16, A commentator on MSNBC revealed what he called a “shocking statistic”. “ONE million people in the U.S. were killed with guns since Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy” (1960s).
FIFTY million babies were killed in U.S. abortion clinics since Roe v. Wade (1973).
To the editor:
This letter is an attempt to keep a promise I made to God when I first heard that I was receiving the Benemerenti Medal. I felt totally unworthy of any recognition from the pope. When I prayed about it, I realized that God, who has given me so many opportunities to serve other people, expected me to see this as another opportunity. There was a strong sense that there was something I was to share.
That was when I made the promise. As the weeks went by, I began to see the award as a symbol of God’s forgiveness and mercy. Would there be an opportunity to share with others my confidence in God’s mercy?
