December 15, 2017

Letters to the Editor

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No amount of gun legislation will change current culture of death, reader says

In the “Be Our Guest” column in the Dec. 1, 2017, edition of The Criterion, Greg Erlandson of Catholic News Service missed a golden opportunity to explore the reasons behind “mass murder and our culture of death.”

Instead, he provided a series of statistics about gun crimes. He quoted Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who said, “a culture of life cannot tolerate, and must prevent, senseless gun violence in all its forms.”

The problem is that we don’t live in a culture of life in this country, and no amount of gun legislation will change that.

Essentially, we are reaping what we have sown. Over 1 million unborn children are aborted each year legally, and yet we expect children not to be abused.

Pornography is available on every smart phone and computer, and we are surprised when women are treated as objectified sexual objects. Hollywood serves up a constant dose of violence, and then is shocked when shootings portrayed and even romanticized on the big screen are played out in real life.

The elderly and disabled are marginalized in a utilitarian society, and we wring our hands about physician‑assisted suicide. The polarization inherent to identity politics causes those not in our group to be viewed with contempt.

Our secular society has turned away from God and objective truth, and essentially made each individual as if they were God, determining right and wrong. When that happens, everything becomes permissible.

- Dr. Stephen O’Neil | Indianapolis

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