When people ask if I am the writer for the Star Herald, I say I am unless they have strong disagreements with me. As luck would have it, they never do. Having started back in 1978, I have met many pleasant folks and I appreciate their comments. Some will ask me why I do not respond to critical letters to the editor. I explain that a long time ago the editor said he did not want unseemly, dismaying exchanges. I understand. But since editorial policies of Catholic newspapers have evolved since then, for instance, forthright news stories appear about clerical abuse of minors when they never did back then, I’ll try to address some recent letters you saw on these pages.
One reader suggested that I forgo listening to Rush Limbaugh. He is right. My response is, why should I start listening now? Another correspondent says I make “the assumption that all [his word] employers and business owners are evil people who rob from their employees to make themselves rich.” Actually, just some, and they account for our many laws against larceny, theft, expropriation and for the Lord’s many counsels against greed. He concludes with “Because these things are so, the free market economy must be maintained.” Indeed it should be – free of larceny, theft, expropriation and greed. Another writer says “it amazes me how . . . socialists like Father Gregorio will hang on every word spoken by Pope Francis on this topic to advance their Marxist agenda.” I am proud to loyally attend to the Holy Father even though ultra-conservatives like Limbaugh accuse him of “spouting Marxism” when they hear him scold their free market savaging the poor.
Another writer took me to task for urging compassion for law-breaking undocumented immigrants who she says are receiving the money of taxpaying citizens. While she disregards that such desperate people pay Social Security tax which they will never collect, and work without protections commonplace to citizens, and risk deportation because they are guilty of DWL (driving while Latino), she claims we must obey the law. Did it occur that some laws are unjust and need to be repealed? It used to be the law that we legal citizens anywhere in the U.S. had to return all fugitive slaves to their owners. This is why mature democracies keep salaried legislatures in session year round. Laws are not written once and for all. But more importantly, some laws are contrary to God’s law, and we are not obliged to obey them. Civil laws like those that cruelly mistreat undocumented refugees fleeing here, sometimes for their very lives, must be repealed. How does she feel about Roe vs. Wade being the law of the land?
Call me Marxist and socialist and commie – or lefty, even if I am right-handed. I am in good company since, as I mentioned already, Pope Francis, a superstar whose speech and actions are amazing the world both Catholic and otherwise, was scored by rash Rush for invoking gospel justice to redistribute through lawful taxation. It goes from those who have to those kept from having. This has been Catholic social justice since before Pope Francis was born. Another critic said he would not let his children be taught by the pope because he was not severe enough on the pelvic issues, mostly because our leadership in recent years has seemed fixated on the admittedly vital issue of chastity, but at the expense of other sins which cause innocent people to die, as happens often along our southern border to refugees.
But why stop with Pope Francis? The most respectable leaders of state and religion called Jesus names when his redistributionist justice hit them in their wallets. Read Matthew 11, 17ff as Jesus confronts the scribes and Pharisees. He quotes the Greek Aesop to his impossible-to-please audience, “‘We piped you a tune but you did not dance. We sang you a dirge but you did not mourn.’ John [the Baptizer] appeared neither eating nor drinking, and people say, ‘He is mad.’ The Son of Man appeared eating and drinking, and they say, ‘He is a glutton and a drunkard, a lover of tax collectors and those outside the law.'”
Because these things are so, the Second Amendment must be repealed.
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