Our Culture's Misguided Actions
Dear Catholic Exchange:
I just read the amazing article by Kristine Franklin in which her child's doctor said in defense of offering a 12 year old birth control pills: “It's part of a community-wide effort to cut down on teen pregnancy.”
His well-intentioned attempt will only INCREASE teen pregnancy. This is an ironclad principle: Any policy that takes away the consequences of irresponsible behavior will increase the amount of irresponsible behavior.
Some examples:
Abortion and birth control, intended to prevent unwanted children, has INCREASED the number of unwanted children because it has helped make sex a recreational activity. And when people get addicted to this activity sometimes they don't care about birth control in the “heat of the moment.”
Food Stamps, designed to eliminate poverty, have INCREASED poverty by making it possible to get three square meals without getting out of bed in the morning to go to work. It fosters irresponsibility. I don't like to get out of bed either, and if I knew I had an excuse not to I might take it.
Perhaps Kristine or another writer could expound upon these points and find other examples.
Joe DeReuil
Dear Mr. DeReuil:
Thank you for your feedback on Kristine Franklin’s article. It is truly sad to see the results of our culture’s misguided attempts at helping people, particularly in the area of sexuality.
I am hopeful that Kristine’s article will serve to remind parents of the dangers of allowing our culture to dictate our children’s choices.
Thank you for your support of Catholic Exchange!
Sincerely,
Mark Dittman
Associate Editor
Catholic Exchange
Wartime Sense of Humor Required
Dear Catholic Exchange:
I am very disappointed in your running the Top Ten Things That Will Get You Thrown Out of the Taliban.
1) David Letterman is a jerk.
2) People have suffered incredible losses – one of them was my cousin who lost her husband in the WTC – he worked for cantor fitzgerald, which lost hundreds of people.
3) Anthrax is not a joke — people have been terrorized, and others have died terrible deaths.
4) I expect this kind of stuff from Letterman, not from a Catholic website.
A Concerned Viewer
Dear Concerned Viewer:
Thank you for your feedback. Sorry you don't share our admittedly offbeat wartime sense of humor, the virtue of which both Mark Shea and Michael Medved have extolled on these pages in recent days (click on their names for each one’s recent article).
From our inception we have believed that Catholicism does not equate humorlessness — the life of St. Philip Neri testifies to that. We have no interest in being a dark, brooding religious site with little appeal or relevance to the vast majority of Catholics. We're both on fire with the love of Christ through His Holy Church and appreciative of this witty Top Ten List. You're certainly entitled to your opinion, of course, that Mr. Letterman is a “jerk,” but countless Catholics enjoy him and we felt this list was innocuous enough to post.
That said, we offer our sincere condolences to your family for the loss of your cousin's husband. I too lost a friend from Cantor-Fitzgerald on 9/11 and another who served as a Port Authority policeman and whose stirring funeral I attended in New Jersey last month. These are difficult times for all and we mean no disrespect.
In Christ,
Tom Allen
Editor
Catholic Exchange
