News

Re: Last Call for Life and Family

I want to thank you very, very much for making it possible for me to stay abreast of the truth about what goes on at “the hill” and for helping me to have a voice in the mess.  I believe that only God can and will straighten it all out.  But we do have to use the human means available to us, along with our prayers and mortifications.

Janice Catt-Lavigne
Plymoouth, Michigan

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Please continue to give us world Catholic news too. As disturbing as it is, we have to see America within the context of a world gone mad. As bad as our government is, we have to be so proud of the millions of good Christians here in America – willing to fight for the pre-born, the elderly.

LifeSite news gives us news that our Catholic clergy and hierarchy don't want us to know. How awful that the laity are following the Magisterium – often alone. God bless your wonderful work. You are the voice of reason.

Sincerely,
Janet Parry, Dame of Malta
Chatham, New Jersey

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Re: National Health Care

Dear Editor:

As a Canadian who practices under federally funded health care that pays for abortions unlimited, it pains me to read of the agonizing efforts to stop the same thing south of our border. 

I support universal coverage but it must be regulated so payment is made only when there is evidence a procedure is: i) necessary, ii) beneficial, iii) relatively devoid of harmful side effects, iv) done only when other less invasive and more reversible therapies have been tried and v) only with fully informed consent. 

The onus of proof for these criteria lies squarely on those who perform or support that procedure.  So why don't US Americans hold Mr. Obama to his often stated determination to rely on science and insist that all the above must apply to abortion and that there be no funding until science has clearly shown abortion does more good than harm to women.  To date there is no such evidence.
        
Dr. Philip Ney MD FRCPC
British Columbia, Canada

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Re: Editor's note to Letter to editor re: “marriage”

Dears Mssrs. Jalsevec and Westen,
 
As a former employee of the Catholic Church in Canada, I became familiar with your site several years ago and have continued to read it from time-to-time.
 
Having since gone to law school, and having lived in three other countries (the United States, England and now Holland), I consider myself to have been exposed to many different experiences and viewpoints.  Nonetheless, it was one of your responses to a letter-to-the-editor last week that finally made me feel compelled to write an e-mail.
 
You chastised a writer of a letter for criticizing your use of quotations to describe same-sex marriage.  You, undoubtedly, believe that God has declared marriage to be a lifelong union between a man and a woman.  Fair enough.  That's a valid viewpoint.  But you surely must admit that civil marriage is a very different concept – a legal relationship between two persons, essentially for as long as they want, under the Marriage Act.  Whether this is good is a matter of genuine controversy but this is clearly marriage as understood in society and I do not think you would refer to a heterosexual marriage that would not be permitted in the Catholic Church as “marriage”?
 
Moreover, if the state is to provide civil marriage to two heterosexual individuals under such circumstances, the Charter clearly prohibits the state from denying it to two homosexual individuals.  Any first-year Canadian law student would know this.  None of this is to detract from your belief that God declared marriage to be a lifelong union between a man and a woman.  I am merely disputing your inability to accept that marriage means different things to different people, and to adopt a theocratic definition of marriage is profoundly contradictory to the principles that Canadian society is built upon.
 
All this having been said, despite strongly disagreeing with what you have to say, I will, as a libertarian, defend to the death your right to say it, and I will defend your right to have an error, as well as your right to be condescending in defending it as a fact.  But I believe you should be aware that using words like “make-belief” seriously hurts your cause.
 
I say this because, despite not agreeing with most of the sentiment conveyed in your articles, I am nonetheless grateful for your contributing “outside the box” viewpoints, especially given the thought police in Europe, who do not exist in the United States or even Canada (Boissoin stories aside, things are MUCH worse here).  I must admit to having been considered pretty mainstream in Canada, and thus outside the Catholic orthodoxy, for which a former roommate of mine frequently attempted to “correct” me, as you evidently do to liberal Catholics in your articles.  But I also find myself being considered conservative now living in Holland.  That said, like my former roommate, I find your work to often be counter-productive.
 
Again, I would like to re-iterate that this e-mail is simply meant to have you reconsider the tone which often permeates your articles, and I feel can further marginalise your viewpoints.
 
Happy Christmas,
 
Tom Lanois
The Hague, South Holland, The Netherlands
(Originally from Kanata, Ontario, Canada)

EDITOR'S NOTE: The reader misinterprets the previous LifeSiteNews note. First of all, it was not meant to be a chastisement. Further, LifeSiteNews does not view marriage only as a religious construct, but rather a lifelong commitment based on natural law, especially the natural complementarity of man and woman. Marriage is not dependent upon religion, nor civil law, to be marriage. However, religion does have a key role in deepening and strengthening that commitment and law has a role in protecting marriage and encouraging the spouses to fulfill their obligations to each other and to their children, which in turn strengthens society.

People of many different religions and many of no religion have come to logically perceive that, regardless of what man-made laws may at times foolishly declare, authentic marriage can only naturally be between male and female partners – for very obvious reasons. Laws cannot change nature. That is why same-sex “marriage” must be in quotes.

As for the arguments pertaining to religion in the original commentary, they were made in response to the religious comments made by the first letter writer, who clearly misunderstood the Christian principles to which he was referring.
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