Religious wrong

Tim Rutten remarks that the Terri Schiavo case has tested the press to its limit [“Schiavo Case Bares Political Sea Change,” March 26]. I disagree. The most striking feature of the whole spectacle has been the reluctance of the mainstream media to recognize the raw face of fanaticism even as it fills our television screens and newspapers.

Practically nothing is said or written about the backgrounds of the radical clerics and their minions who organize these sickly pseudo-events, leaving the impression that it is simply People of Conscience converging on Florida to bear witness and catch some rays.

The public voice of ethical and spiritual propaganda as it flows from the religious right poses an urgent question: If the promoters are expressing the results of their sacred thoughts, then aren’t many quite common kinds of sacred thinking genuinely dangerous to our freedoms and our legacy of tolerance? History is rife with examples of the evil that can occur at the hands of the morally certain.

Michael Finnigan

Encino