Letters to the Editor
Immigrants bring values that many Americans have long forgotten
The United States has suffered great losses to its core population in the last several generations. U.S. citizens deliberately and legally destroyed some 50 million newly conceived children in the womb the past 33 years.
With the loss of this stock, future generations have been necessarily reduced. Even more, our culture has motivated couples to delay marriage, and then hold back on the birth rate. Chemical means have not only reduced but ended pregnancies.
Into the breach came millions of workers from India, Pakistan, China, the Muslim world and south of the border. Many entered legally; many with temporary visas have been permitted to stay. The Mexicans have quite successfully fit into this nation of ours. Succeeding generations have moved up in American society. Their religious faith, their deep family values, their spirit of hard work and sacrifice, and their self-reliance have served them well in their places of employment and neighborhoods.
The openings in our economy for laborers from Mexico have been estimated to run at about 500,000 annually, which account for less than one-third of this country’s elective abortion total. I propose that the U.S. open up entry points at certain border locations for the admittance of these documented workers and their families. After they have settled in their jobs and homes and learned English, full citizenship should be offered them. This courtesy should also be offered to Mexican nationals who have been living here for a longer time.
If talk radio, TV and the press want “ America for the Americans,” all they have to do is to outlaw the killing of babies in the womb, stop contraception, open up marriage for the birth of children, and restrict marriage to one man and one woman. In the meantime, we are blessed by the skill and generosity of the good people from south of the border. We should show our own generosity and appreciation, and speak out for their acceptance in our country.
James E. Morgan
Metuchen
Thanks for helping a worthy cause
We extend our heartfelt thanks to all who have shared in the care of our elderly religious through contributions to the annual Retirement Fund for Religious Appeal.
The $261,912 contributed by the people of the Diocese of Metuchen — a 10 percent increase over 2004 giving of $237,614 — is a great help to senior religious throughout the United States.
Ninety-four cents of every dollar contributed goes directly to religious institutes, and you are remembered daily in the prayers of the more than 38,000 senior religious who benefit from your generosity.
Sister Andree Fries
National Religious Retirement Office
Washington D.C.
Divorced Catholics to be addressed
This letter is to clarify an article written by Marilyn Wickel, a member of the synod’s Parish Life Commission, in The Catholic Spirit on May 25, 2006 titled, “Church needs to welcome the divorced, remarried.”
The Parish Life Commission did in fact, have a lively discussion about divorced and remarried Catholics. Based on the data collected in the Phase I speak up sessions, we submitted a question about divorced and remarried Catholics to Bishop Bootkoski for his approval and for further discussion in Phase II. The approved topics returned to us by the bishop did not include the divorced and remarried question.
Consequently, the Parish Life Commission was informed that Bishop Bootkoski will be addressing the issues directly, in the near future, with a pastoral letter on the Church’s teaching on divorced and remarried Catholics.
The topic of welcoming and ministering to divorced and remarried Catholics is still very much a part of the Parish Life Phase II discussion under the following questions:
“How can parish communities become more effective at welcoming and ministering to the widest possible range of parishioners . . . as well as alienated, inactive Catholics?” (Question 2)
“How can parish communities better support every type of family (e.g. nuclear, single parent) as they develop and change?” (Question 4)
Cecelia P. Regan, Chair
Synod Parish Life Commission
Time for Catholics to take a moral stand against in vitro fertilization
Embryonic stem cell research (ESR) receives abundant media attention. Many oppose ESR because it involves the destruction of life. Yet, as ESR advocates correctly observe, the many extra embryos created during in vitro fertilization (IVF) will only be thrown away anyway. Thus, anyone who objects to ESR must also oppose IVF.
While the Catholic Church strongly opposes IVF, many Catholics are content to disregard this teaching. Our clergy need to echo Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s exhortation to shout loudly from the mountaintops against IVF. Here are some reasons that IVF is wrong:
First, assisted conception separates sexuality from life creation. The Church has consistently taught that sexuality is linked to openness toward life. The last 30 years have shown what happens when sexuality and life creation are disconnected. In the 1970s, the culture came to view sex principally as something that feels good. Adultery became more thinkable and doable and the expectation that couples would endure through challenging periods has waned. Divorce rates spiked and have remained high since.
Now the culture has come to view children as something else that will make us feel good and not as a gift from God. If we view life as a commodity to satisfy us and create children without physical intimacy and through the actions of a mediating technician, the basis for sexual exclusivity in marriage declines and the sacred bond of marriage is even further attenuated.
Second, IVF entails the mass production — and mass destruction — of life and engenders an “ownership” orientation to life. Because it is economically efficient to do so, IVF practitioners make multiple embryos, use as many as their “owners” want, freeze the rest for years and destroy them when owners approve destruction.
If embryos are just undifferentiated cell masses with no special identity, why does the culture spend billions of dollars to implant not just any embryos, but, instead, insist on those which bear the characteristics of the parents? Further, in addition to making hundreds of thousands of frozen, disposable embryos, IVF clinics routinely implant multiple embryos to increase their success rates and their profits, and they “selectively reduce” (abort) the extra unwanted fetuses that implant in the womb by injecting postassium chloride into the hearts of the unwanted.
Third, IVF is high-tech eugenics. IVF embryos are genetically screened for defects and gender. Only those considered suitable are implanted. Presently, over 90 percent of embryos suspected to have Down’s Syndrome are “terminated.” This quality control process intensifies monthly as genetic interpretation accelerates. In a high-tech version of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, genetic profiling enables parents to prenatally purge the defective.
Fourth, IVF clinics are facilitating human cloning efforts. Much of the same the equipment, techniques and research developed for IVF is used for cloning.
Fifth, assisted conception is a high-tech fix for the social problems of sexual promiscuity and postponed marriage. STD or abortion scarring causes much of the demand for IVF. Most remaining infertile couples have waited until long after their prime childbearing years to attempt conception. Instead of confronting our commitment-phobia and media-fed hyper selectivity of suitable mates, we ask technicians to bail us out, just as we do — with similarly dubious results — with so many other social problems.
Sixth, if IVF is accepted, on what moral basis could society oppose other forms of reproductive choice, such as selecting a child’s sex, genetically designing the unborn or cloning?
Mark Oshinskie
Highland Park
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Opinions expressed in this section are those of the letter writer and do not necessarily reflect Church teaching, or the position of The Catholic Spirit or the Diocese of Metuchen.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law