Letters to the Editor

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No letters were printed this week; here are the letters from last week:

Not all injustices in the world are equal

Like a bad penny, the “seamless garment” meme has been resurrected by a Criterion reader in the Oct. 19 issue.

Though the letter writer doesn’t use the term, they morally conflate social justice issues with the fight against abortion, but there are no other issues if one doesn’t make it out of the womb.

They question if pro-lifers are really just pro‑birthers. Yet fighting abortion does not resonate with the secular culture around us while other social justice issues do. Taking it on is a monumental task, and there are precious few willing to stand outside in the freezing rain or blistering sun to offer a loving plea to consider alternatives to ending a life in utero.

Where the letter writer sees “protesters,” I see peaceful and prayerful witnesses. Where they see a “Planned Parenthood facility,” I see a charnel house. Where they see the moral equivalence of arms control, school lunches, the death penalty, the minimum wage, quality education and universal health care to abortion, I see it as the foundational issue that eclipses all others.

Even other life-and-death issues like euthanasia and the death penalty pale in their numbers compared to the millions who die in their mother’s wombs every year.

Our bishops have said the same thing in various documents over the years.

Had the letter writer just driven a few feet past the scene they witnessed at Planned Parenthood, they would have seen the Women’s Care Center and around the corner the First Choice for Women and the Gabriel Project. All extend loving and compassionate assistance to mothers in distressing circumstances.

Then there is Right to Life, Heartbeat International, Birthline and 40 Days for Life and so many others.

Finally, not all injustices in the world are equal, and I make no apologies for being a single-issue voter trying to eradicate the worst injustice of all—abortion.

- Colleen Butler | Indianapolis

How do you vote? Reader notes challenges for today’s electorate

I am neither Democrat nor Republican—blue or red. I find no solace in either. Politics, it seems to me, for far too long, has been concerned with right or left, liberal or conservative, instead of right or wrong.

When I vote, I am usually not voting for anybody; I vote against. The difference between a liberal and a conservative is that one deliberates truth as an inconvenience whereas the other opposes it on principle.

I always vote my conscience, because my conscience is formed and informed in my Catholic faith—the principles of Catholic moral and social teaching.

I would love to vote for the best person, but that person is never a candidate. Under democracy, one party always dedicates its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is incompetent to rule—and both commonly succeed and are usually right.

An election is coming. National peace and prosperity are declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. Politics is the gentle and skillful art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.

I am an advocate of voting, but sometimes I feel like, if voting really changed anything, they would probably make it illegal.

- Kirth N. Roach | Order of Carmelite Discalced Secular, Indianapolis