Letters to the Editor

Personalized funerals can be sacred

I feel I must respond to your article on contemporary funerals ("Burying Tradition," Oct. 21) and the letter published in the Nov. 11 edition agreeing with the idea expressed there in that funerals are losing a sense of the sacred. My experience in our one-priest parish here in Pittsburgh, where we had 40 funerals in the last year, was most sacred.

How can a funeral liturgy, with challenging readings and appropriate music, NOT be sacred?

We are allowed one eulogy at the end of Mass. A public tribute to the deceased person, whether she baked cookies for her grandchildren,or whether he told good stories to them, I do not think secularizes the funeral. Rather, I think kind remembrances of the dead reinforce the Christlike actions they demonstrated while they were with us. This is how they showed us they loved us.

-- Martha C. ShanleyPittsburgh, Pa.

Worthiness of office

In her letter to the editor of Nov. 11 ("More to the issue"), Mary Ann Dorsett wrote, "We cannot logically or morally deplore the deaths of the unborn on the one hand and excuse and rationalize the death and suffering after birth on the other."

I'm familiar with this argument, and I find the logic weak, as it seems to imply that there's a plethora of anti-abortion politicians who are gleefully implementing all sorts of policies that lead to death and suffering. Rather, I'd like to know how pro-abortion politicians can be trusted to be champions of justice for all other stages of life.

If this is a retread of the arguments that John Kerry-supporting Catholics used in the last election, I have only to say that Catholics of good conscience need not equate abortion with war or the death penalty; the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that abortion is unequivocally wrong, whereas there are instances where war or the death penalty might be necessary. It's true that if we're not safe in the womb, we aren't safe anywhere. As Mother Teresa said, "What is taking place in America is a war against the child. And if we accept that the mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another."

Dorsett also said, "We need to examine the broad range of decisions of these leaders to understand if their views truly reflect those of Our Lord." Our Lord's view? I seem to recall Jesus mentioning something about a millstone around the neck and a plunge into the sea for those who would harm one of these little ones (Mt 18:6). Therefore, it seems to me that a candidate's position on abortion is a very suitable starting point when judging one's worthiness to hold elected office.

-- Colleen SollingerDayton, Ohio

Unfair grades

I wish to comment about your article "Does Bush make grade with Catholics" (News Analysis, Oct. 21). I was sorely disappointed with your response. I understand that the abortion issue is important, but I don't think that it should be the only issue here. You mentioned that Bush's "No Child Left Behind Act has been a success, but most educators would complain that it is thoroughly underfunded.

The war issue was repeatedly spoken against in those months leading up to the 2003 invasion. Pope John Paul II and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, both condemned the planned invasion of Iraq, calling it an "unjust" war.

Because of Bush and Dick Cheney's flagrant disregard of constitutional law and international law, it has shown us and the world that America has lost its moral sense of right and wrong.

Witness Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture and the refusal to sit at a table with "enemies," the scandals in the Justice Department and the slow response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

There are calls to impeach Cheney/Bush because they lied to illegally enter into a pre-emptive strike against Iraq. Worst of all, now they are planning on attacking Iran and starting another war of aggression.

We as Catholics are taught to pray for peace, but I'm afraid that with this president, peace is out of the question. Bush has but one motto: "War without end, amen."

-- Marcia BraccianoMonroe, Mich.

Historical error

I have just received my Nov. 11 copy of Our Sunday Visitor and see that you have listed the names of some of those beatified this fall. Among them is the name of Franz Jägerstätter, identified as "an Austrian layman hanged when he refused to serve" in Hitler's army. However, you are in error in stating that he was hanged. He was beheaded and his remains cremated, put into a container and given to his wife.

I personally have a small piece of his bone, picked from among his cremains, because Gordon Zahn, my professor at Loyola University in Chicago, went to Austria in the early 1960s on a research grant during the summer, located the wife of Blessed Jägerstätter, heard her story of her husband's death and received from her a fragment of her husband's bone, which is a first-class relic. He later shared the relic with me.

Zahn wrote the book "In Solitary Witness" about Blessed Jägerstätter. More recently, a correct account is included in Robert Royal's "Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century" (Crossroad Publishing Company, $19.95).

-- Theresita PolzinDenver, Colo.

Rebuilding efforts

It is hard to believe it has been more than two years since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Thank you very much for sending a check in September. (OSV readers adopted Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Slidell, La., and Holy Family Parish in Pass Christian, Miss., as part of a fund drive initiated by OSV in the weeks after the hurricane.) Your readers have been so generous to us, and it is with their support and prayers we are continuing in our rebuilding efforts.

The architect is in the process of drawing the blue-prints for the new school and church. Our goal is to be in the new school by August 2009 and in the church by Christmas 2009. We continue to try to take it day by day. Please continue to keep us in your prayers.

-- Rev. Frank Lipps Slidell, La.