Letter to the Editor from Atlanta, GA

Published: August 19, 2004

To the Editor:

Catholics who consider themselves progressive often castigate the church for responding timidly to such contemporary social ills as racism and war. Indeed, they still decry the failure of 20th-century German bishops to mobilize their flocks against the Nazi killing machine.

But how do these same people react when our archbishop insists that faithful Catholics reject the most popular form of violence in America today, the wholesale slaughter of defenseless babies? Sadly, too many of them plead that their faith is a matter of private conscience unrelated to their civic responsibilities. Others invoke the shallow relativism that dismisses all Christian moral instruction as self-righteous judgmentalism.

More thoughtful critics remind us that even abortion advocates support many public policies and programs we can readily endorse. But politically astute Catholics recognize that their motives are clearly not ours. The rich treasury of Catholic social teaching rests on the conviction that every human life has dignity and value in the sight of God. Unless they are grounded in that basic principle, cries for social justice are no more than trendy political posturing.

Ron Chandonia, Atlanta