Letters

Letter to Pope

Posted

I was a little surprised that there was no reader response published to the “Open Letter to Pope Francis on Prenatal Justice” by Fordham University professor Charles C. Camosy (CNY, Feb. 11).

Its prominence on the page and its content certainly caught my attention and raised some interesting questions for me, another pro-life Catholic who welcomes these views.

There was something audacious about it to me. I won’t say any more than that I think the kind of chatty reasonableness in writing to the pope strikes me as new-ish. How would Julius II have responded or, for that matter, Benedict XVI, to such offhand nudging?

Over and above the tone, I wonder if we pro-lifers lose more than we gain in not explaining our use of terms while at the same time insisting on them: “prenatal children” and “calling for equal protection of the law for their children, regardless of age."

These are bound to be dismissed offhand by pro-choice supporters.

Often heard is the line “serious people of good faith disagree.”

And on this issue, the disagreement is a very fundamental one. Is the life in the womb a “child,” or is it not?

While Camosy bids the pope to make that case of life unambiguously in official pronouncements (that too is my hope), will we not have to accept that there will always be others who will not accept these terms and these premises?

Joe R. Struble
Rochester