LETTERS

Reader takes issue with book review

The Editor: Since when is it politically correct to attack the so-called Religious Right for simply practicing their Christian faith? The most recent political move by what the author of the book The Armageddon Factor calls "Christian Right" in Ottawa was to offer women and children in poor countries positive aid in maternal and child care (to the exclusion of abortion which aids no one).

The government was severely criticized by Opposition leaders as well as pro-abortion international representatives.

If such criticism is considered as “performing a significant public service” as stated by Dennis Gruending in his June 2 Pulpit & Politics column, not only will I not read The Armageddon Factor but I will no longer read Dennis Gruending's columns in the Prairie Messenger.

A book review of The Armageddon Factor by Paul Tuns, editor of The Interim, Canada's Life & Family Newspaper, offers an alternative view. — Margaret Angelstad, Humboldt, Sask.

When it comes to racism, talk is cheap

The Editor: Considering our fallible human nature, it is understandable, albeit regrettable, how some racial slurs can become accepted as inoffensive and slip into the language commonly used for communication. The “Nazi” term is one of them when speaking or reporting about Germany’s past century.

When I came to Canada in 1951 and worked as an intern at the Provincial Mental Hospital of Saint John, NB, I was approached one day by a female doctor who stated that I had served during the Second World War in the “Nazi army.”

I was surprised and I did not know what the term meant. Therefore, I told the lady doctor that I was a trained army medic who had worked in this capacity in the German army in Ukraine and in Romania. But there was no “Nazi army.”

The lady doctor did not say anything more. Apparently she could not describe what actually a Nazi army was. Neither can I or anybody else using this unfortunate, hate -generating and maintaining term, which thoughtlessness — to say the least — has allowed its persistent use in the media.

If we wish to avoid or even stop racism, let’s do it and not just talk about it. Talk is cheap and ineffective. — Wilhelm Kreyes, MD, Winnipeg

Highlighting Layton in a Catholic paper offends reader

The Editor: In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Pope John Paul II wrote, “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to "take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it" (#73).

I am using this quotation from the late pope as a guideline for picking people to report on.

How could you as a Catholic newspaper highlight Jack Layton in the May 19 issue in your article on the national prayer breakfast? Layton leads a party which promotes, endorses and supports abortion on demand. I have Layton on video as a city councilman, standing by with the Toronto chief of police, watching men, women, priests and nuns being kicked, punched and spit upon as they prayed and sang as they blocked one of Morgenthaler’s killing places. Your article said Layton read Scripture. Did he not see the part that said, “Thou shall not kill?”

In the future, please highlight someone whose sense of justice is not dictated by a political agenda that stands for the legalized killing of our unborn brothers and sisters. — Michael Martorana, Regina