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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
JUNE 1999
DOES THE CARDINAL LISTEN?
I am continually amazed at Cardinal Mahony's lack of sense of proportion and propriety. The May 1999 issue of the Mission reports that His Eminence called on Catholics to oppose the death penalty, stating that "We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing" (See News, May, 1999). The article goes on to say that 530 convicted killers have been executed since 1976 when the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. That equates to 16 a year. I do not minimize their deaths, but in that same period there have been millions of unborn babies murdered through legal abortions. These babies were not convicted felons or convicts or killers, they were innocent, unborn babies.
I have heard little or nothing from the chancery or the cardinal or even from the pulpit excoriating this abomination of abortions that plagues this country. Because the Supreme Court has declared abortion to be legal does not mean that God has declared it to be moral.
First the cardinal chooses a building site for his new cathedral on an Indian burial ground. Then we have him opposing the Catholic Worker because they believe the archdiocese should have higher priorities than a new cathedral, particularly when immigrant Catholics from Latin America are being wooed and won every day by a multitude of Protestant evangelical sects -- and now this. Who is advising this poor man? Does he ever get out of his automobile and walk the streets to talk to Jose Fulano or Joe Six-pack? Does he ever go into the barrio or into the homes of the poor and just listen?
Not talk, just listen?
John St.Denis
Murrieta