To the editor:
I read the guest article in the Catholic Herald regarding the current labor situation in Wisconsin with deep disappointment.
The author clearly sought to undermine the Catholic moral principle of regard for the sanctity of labor and the right to form unions by selective use of quotations. The author suggests that Church doctrine does not encompass unions representing public workers, or unions that are politically active. This is simply not true.
To the editor:
On the topic of democracy, 50 years ago the Rev. John Courtney Murray, in his book We Hold These Truths, described majoritarianism as a kind of democratic tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged. We see this in the American political system, where you get both war and abortion, or usury and the normalization of sodomy no matter who you vote for.
To the editor:
According to the contents of Roe vs. Wade, all unborn babies are not human, not persons. They are eligible for execution. They are inhuman like animals.
Before President Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, the U.S. government regarded all African Americans as not humans, not persons. They were like animals and therefore eligible for slavery.
To the editor:
“To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them,” said St. Thomas Aquinas.
Please share this story with those that need converting.
Ultimately, what is at stake here in Wisconsin is the workers’ voice. While I was serving in the active duty military, my wife worked as a certified nursing assistant in nursing homes in Arizona and Florida — two “Right to Work States.”
To the editor:
Being a Catholic teenager is one of the hardest things to do. In this day and age believing in God is thought of as a disease. People make fun of Catholic beliefs and it is getting out of hand.
I am lucky enough to have amazing friends who support me in my faith, but so many others are afraid of showing theirs for fear of rejection.
To the editor:
Dave Kuhle pointed out (Catholic Herald Mailbag, February 3 issue) that Christ’s commandment to love one’s neighbor was not new because, under God’s direction, Moses prescribed this same commandment in the Old Testament book of Leviticus Lv 19:18. This is true as far as it goes, but misleading, because Christ spelled this out in detail, which was new.
To the editor:
A couple of weeks ago I sent an e-mail to you regarding the staff of Sacred Hearts School, Sun Prairie. I suggested that it is remarkable that so many of its teachers are also alumni.
To the editor:
From the time I was in parochial school 50 years ago, I believed that Jesus replaced the old laws with new laws and gave us two new commands: to love God and one another. But I was wrong.
We frequently hear sermons at Mass that Jesus gave us new commandments, and in Tony Magliano’s article in the December Catholic Herald, regarding what Jesus would do if he were here today. Magliano wrote, “. . . consider John 13:34. Here, Jesus says: ‘I give you a new commandment: love one another.’” Magliano writes that Jesus’ commandment to love one another is new, and is vastly better than the old commandments which required an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
But a thorough understanding of John 13:34 reveals that when Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment: love one another,” he did not recite a new commandment, but quoted a 1,200 year old passage prescribed by Moses in Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”
To the editor:
In 1983, on the 10th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton Supreme Court decisions legalizing abortion-on-demand in this country, President Ronald Reagan wrote an article for the magazine Human Life Review titled “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation.” I would like to share the last paragraph of this fine article on this the 38th anniversary of Roe and Bolton.
“Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide . . . there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.”
To the editor:
Overnight, it seems, in 1973, abortion became legal. We have looked the other way ever since, convincing ourselves there is nothing one person can do to end it now.
We scream to end destruction of lives in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We ended the war in Vietnam because we protested until someone in Washington listened.
