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Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

LETTERS
NOVEMBER 1997

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DON'T DISCOURAGE JESUIT VOCATIONS

If your paper is to be a truly Catholic paper, it should appeal to its readers to pray for all who are involved in the wrongs it exposes -- the perpetrators, immediate victims, and all innocent Catholics in no way directly involved in the scandals.

We should not risk shaking the confidence of parents in good Jesuit teachers, nor should we discourage vocations to the Jesuit order. There are thousands of good Jesuits worldwide laboring in complete conformity with the Magisterium of the Church. We need more good Jesuits, not less.

I believe that in every exposé of a scandalous situation, you must appeal to your readers to pray that the Holy Spirit will provide enlightenment and guidance, and that the innocent will be protected.

Thomas Mullaney
San Francisco


THE BEST CAUSES ARE LOST CAUSES

Your publication just came into my hands for the first time.

As a fourth-generation San Franciscan who has been witness to the city's cultural and moral degradation over the last 30 years, I did not believe that a publication like yours would ever again be possible.

Needless to say, there have been within the Church radical, naive and cowardly elements at every level. One with these unhappy years has been the destruction of Catholic education, which started with the collapse of the Jesuit order and has proceeded to infect every level of Catholic education from the university level on down.

Opposition to this radicalization has not been effective or principled from within the Church and the clergy in general. Nor have the bishops (with rare exceptions) been other than middle managers in a largely secularized world in which they appear to be mostly concerned with their own comfort, security and privilege.

Christ's judgment of such people in his own time can only be described as harsh.

Clearly the counter-revolutionary efforts are coming from laymen and lay publications such as yours which are filling the void and giving to Catholics (who attempt to live as such) the only encouragement, both intellectual and moral, generally available.

You are to be congratulated. Your way will not be easy and you may fail, but as Chesterton remarked, "The only worthwhile causes are lost causes."

George E. Mohun, M.D.
Novato

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