Kirkpatrick’s Attack on Bishop

It is a relief to know that Jeane Kirkpatrick is not a Catholic. We already have Patrick Buchanan. Her facile assumption that Bishop McGann treated questions of public policy as a matter of faith and morals is false. Sophomores with a background in Christian ethics know not only the distinction between public policy and morality, but the greater distinction between policy and faith. If they don’t, they would flunk the course unless, of course, the university policy decrees otherwise!

Intellectual honesty, however, demands my agreement with Kirkpatrick’s valid caveat that church officials keep these issues distinct for the greater blessing of religious liberty.

It is easier for one to pass through the eye of the needle than for an intelligent ideologue to see the simple truth in Central America. The impeccable anti-Communist, Richard Nixon, who went to Communist China, recently said: “We speak of the Communists; the Communists speak of the poor; we must begin to speak of the poor.” Kirkpatrick’s articulate obfuscation must yield to Nixon’s simple insight!

ALOYSIUS MICHAEL

Los Angeles