Letter to Jeff Jacoby, Columnist, The Boston Globe c/o St Petersburg Times, January 8, 2000
Dear Mr. Jacoby,
RE: Unheard Muslims Must Raise Voices, St Petersburg TIMES, 1/8/2000
Please reassess your opinion of what Catholic leaders would do if Catholics did what the Muslims did in highjacking an airliner, etc.. The following events may help you do this.
When John Salvi killed two women in Planned Parenthood clinics, he said he did it to protect the church. He heard Catholic leaders preaching that legal abortions threatened the survival of the church. Cardinal Law beckoned his colleagues to call a halt to picketing as it helped incite Salvi to murder the women. Cardinal O'Connor, a spokesman for the pope, responded he and others would call a halt to the picketing when the US government called a halt to all abortions. Let the murders continue. Other clergy justified the murders by emphasizing the women were helping to kill the innocent unborn. A Catholic bishop in Western Canada said God had made a good thing out of the killings because the killings will reduce the number of abortions.
Books could be written about the Catholic clergy endorsing killings in the best interest of the church.
The pope plans to grant sainthood to the late Cardinal Stepanic of Croatia. As the leading Catholic clergy in Croatia during WWII, Stepanic helped invite the Nazis into Croatia. He then led Nazi and Croatian troops in forcing more than 300,000 Greek Orthodox Serbs to convert to Catholicism or die. Many died. When the pope was reminded of this, he said what Stepanic did was in the best interest of the church.
During WWII, Catholic clergy in Germany joined with Lutheran clergy in declaring that any persons who do not accept Jesus as their savior are not worthy of living. Non-believers, such as Jews, were labeled "vermin" and were to be wiped out. - shades of the Inquisition, the massacre of American Indians by Mexican troops, etc. Hitler said he was a Catholic and by killing Jews, he was doing the work of the Lord - the pope nodded.
In December, 1997, the pope reached his goal of having Roman Catholicism be the legal religion of Croatia. It all started in 1991 when the pope, Bush, and Kohl persuaded the European Union to recognize the claims of independence of dominantly Catholic Croatia from Yugoslavia. The pope knew a civil war with Yugoslavia would start and many thousands of people would die. In 1995, Croatian forces killed or ethnically cleansed more than 60,000 Serbs from Croatia. No Serb survivors are permitted to return to their homes. in Croatia. The Catholic hierarchy, as instigators of the war, was silent as the Catholic troops murdered the Serbs.
Lawrence Eagleburger, Bush's Secretary of State in 1991 recently stated the Bush administration made a terrible mistake by joining with the pope and Kohl in pressuring the European Union to honor Catholic Croatia's leaders claim of independence. It led to other unwanted religious wars in Yugoslavia.
A different view,
James M. O'Hara
PC: Paul C. Tash, Executive Editor, TIMES