Vatican Politics and Population

* Re “Papal Politics” by Martin E. Marty, Opinion, Sept. 11:

Marty is right, the Pope played hardball. Unfortunately we played softball. However, Marty needs to take his thinking one step farther. The Pope has no more right being a major spokesperson at the population conference than would a mayor from Tahiti being a major spokesperson at a Vatican Ecumenical Council.

This was a conference of states, not of religions. As such, the Pope represents the Vatican, a state with a few thousand people, mostly men. He doesn’t represent the millions of Catholics around the world. They are represented by their heads of state.

Vice President Al Gore was far too willing to compromise with the Pope. He would have been within his right to say to the Pope, “You don’t represent the millions of Catholics in the U.S. I do. I am representing their views more accurately than you do. Most of the Catholics strongly disagree with your views.” Gore, of course, could have said that diplomatically.

Gore would have been much wiser politically to have challenged the Pope. Gore is a family man. Gore did sacrifice a run for the White House when his son needed him. He is, in my opinion, a much more moral man than most who are in Washington or even in the Vatican. Only someone like Gore could have pointed out the absurdity of the Pope dominating a political conference on population.

Gore is too much of a gentleman to have done so.

RICHARD FOY

Redondo Beach

* Marty accuses the Vatican of throwing “Cairo off course.” Through the draft program of action, the Clinton Administration (Vice President Gore, Undersecretary Tim Wirth) and their allies have attempted to throw Third World development off course. At the Cairo conference the Catholic representatives have objected most strongly to:

* The redefinition of abortion as health care and a form of family planning.

* The redefinition of family to include homosexual relationships (to the detriment of children).

* The corrupting of youth morality by Planned Parenthood-type sex education.

With such significant issues on the table, it is to the credit of the Catholic community that the Vatican did not cave in after continual attacks like that of Marty. It is also a compliment to the Vatican that Marty’s attack was more personal than substantive.

It was the draft program for action that shifted emphasis from development toward radical social engineering. It has been the U.S. contingency and its allies that have stonewalled on clarifying terms, refused to admit they are breaking with previous development conferences on abortion and hidden behind euphemisms.

What the U.S. delegation, the draft program for action and the Cairo Conference have refused to acknowledge is that the major cause of poverty and suffering is not population growth, but poor political and economic policies. The former communist world has long had the highest rates of abortion. Where is their prosperity and development? Lower fertility rates do not lead to development.

Sociology has shown conclusively that the traditional family is the foundation on which any healthy society must build.

The Vatican has exposed to the world the deceits hidden in the euphemisms of the draft program for action. In the midst of the uproar, the attacks and the criticism, I am proud that the Catholic community has taken this heroic stand.

THE REV. THOMAS J. BURDICK

Chairman, Respect Life Committee

San Bernardino Diocese

* I disagree with Marty’s accusation that the Pope is being political. The fact that the killing of pre-born babies has become a political issue is of no concern to the Pope. He is simply reaffirming God’s fifth commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.”

BARBARA D. KENT-BELROY

Fullerton

* There can be no real improvement in the lives of many people without the increased use of artificial methods of birth control to curb the number of babies born on this planet with no food, no shelter and no hope. The Pope is kidding himself if he thinks otherwise.

JUDY DANIELS

Thousand Oaks

* So the malcontent Malthusians who roam the corridors of the U.N. and the White House, both of which already consider themselves the world government, have got $17 billion with which to enforce our “reproductive rights.”

Quite apart from forwarding a theory long discredited and without scientific foundation, the real question of Cairo is not about women’s rights, the power of the Vatican or legal abortion.

It is about surrendering a basic individual freedom to a government. Letting them into your bedroom, in essence.

Lest you consider this overly Orwellian, ponder this: Who will be the overpopulator? You? Me? Or will it be the person who doesn’t agree?

ROBERT LUSETICH

Los Angeles