Letters to the Editor: January-February 2025

Stirred Up

When I first saw the supertitle of Will Hoyt’s article on James Bond, “Shaken Not Stirred” (Oct.), I knew I was in for a treat. I tended bar for 37 years, serving the famous or, more appropriately, the infamous in some of the finest establishments in Washington, D.C., and those three words brought immediately to my mind Agent 007’s famous line, “Vodka martini, shaken not stirred.”

However, as an old-school barman, and a martini purist, I would cringe when someone asked for a vodka martini. My first words in response were always, “What type of gin is your preference?” To which they’d reply, “Oh, I wanted vodka.” Argh! A true martini is made with gin, not vodka; it is stirred, not shaken; and it is garnished with an olive. Naturally, I would keep those thoughts to myself as I “happily” mixed their preference.

I chuckled when Mr. Hoyt wrote, “Shaking up essentially contradictory aspects to the Homeric and Virgilian viewpoints, much as a bartender might when asked to make an iced martini with vodka and a slice of lemon.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with an iced vodka garnished with a lemon slice — just don’t call it a martini. A martini it is not.

Great Scott! If we went back in time in a DeLorean to the pre-Prohibition days, the barmen of old would look at the person who ordered a vodka martini as if he had just clubbed a baby seal.

Bartending these days has become something of an abomination to the art of mixing drinks. I remember when drinks were made with booze, not lemon grass, guava nectar, peach puree, pickle juice, eye of newt, or some oddity from a third-world market or a grandmother’s kitchen cabinet. I’m proud of all the years I stood behind three feet of wood and plied my trade. But I’m glad I retired when I did.

Cheers!

Nick Wineriter

Bartender Hall of Fame 1994

Ocala, Florida

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Edmund B. Miller’s description of the “extraordinarily ambiguous” episode in The Violent Bear It Away when Tarwater takes Bishop, the disabled boy, “out to the lake and simultaneously baptizes and drowns him” (“Time & the Longing for Eternity,” Nov.) reminded me of the 1985 Irish film Lamb, in which a strikingly similar event happens. Liam Neeson plays Michael, a Christian Brother who abandons his vocation and leaves the boarding school for troubled boys where he had been working, taking with him a ten-year-old named Owen who suffers epileptic seizures. After struggling to pass themselves off as father and son, and reluctant to let the boy go home, Michael drowns Owen during one of his seizures while calling out to God, in a sort of baptism.

Now I know where Bernard MacLaverty, the author of the novel on which the movie is based, might have gotten his idea: from the American Southern writer Flannery O’Connor.

John F. Early

Bronx, New York

EDMUND B. MILLER REPLIES:

John F. Early wonders if the 1985 film Lamb took inspiration from Tarwater’s baptism/drowning of Bishop in Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away. At face value, I agree there is some similarity between the two scenes: a handicapped child is offered deliverance through the waters of death. From beginning to end, however, Lamb is essentially nihilistic. Religion and religious figures are unthinkingly portrayed as hypocritical, and the world is a predator. Liam Neeson’s character, Michael Lamb, determines, then, that he must find his own answers. So he takes Owen to the ocean, and while the boy is having an epileptic fit, carries him into the water and pushes him under. In a gross, anti-baptismal moment, Lamb looks up, curses Jesus, and tells Him, “Make it die, damn you.”

The film, with screenplay by Bernard MacLaverty, debuted in Ireland in 1986. And we know where Ireland has gone since then.

Humanity can be dark, Flannery knew; yet she affirmed always that the Lamb of God is real. In MacLaverty’s script, man must be his own futile lamb.

Unjustifiably Gloomy

In thinking about the history of America’s pro-life movement, it’s tempting to despair for the reasons Paul James Macrae identifies in “The Rise & Fall of the Human Life Amendment” (Nov.). But that would be a mistake. Pro-lifers have won victories by pursuing the very state-based, or incrementalist, strategy he rejects. To build on them, the movement should redouble its efforts to restrict both the supply of and demand for abortion.

Mr. Macrae is clear-eyed in noting the defeats the pro-life cause has suffered, including to its maximalist or national strategy. It has been defeated in the congressional and presidential wings of the Democratic Party. It has suffered a setback, if not a defeat, in the Republican Party, which no longer calls for federal legislation to protect the unborn from abortion at 20 weeks’ gestation. And it has been defeated in state ballot initiatives, in Michigan, most notably. (One minor error: Voters in North Dakota, not South Dakota, as Macrae states, rejected a 1972 initiative to repeal the state’s abortion law.)

Macrae ends his article with a call for hope. Yet his assessment of the pro-life cause is unjustifiably gloomy. “Pro-lifers may have won in court,” he writes, referring to the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe v. Wade, “but they have lost everywhere else over the past 50 years.” This is wrong. Since Dobbs, a dozen states have enacted full legal protections for the unborn: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Dakota, Indiana, Idaho, and West Virginia. Another four states protect the unborn after six weeks in the womb: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Iowa. Nebraska and North Carolina do so after 12 weeks. That’s 18 states more than in 1973, when Roe was decided. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in states with full legal protections, 63 abortion clinics have gone out of business.

Even before Dobbs, states enacted curbs on abortion: 24-hour waiting periods, informed-consent laws, and stricter regulation of abortion clinics and doctors. These laws aren’t flashy. They aren’t memorable. But scholars have found evidence that they protect the unborn from abortion.

For example, a 2022 article in the academic journal BMC Public Health reviewed 34 studies from 2010 to 2021 on the effects of laws in the United States that require waiting periods, typically 24 hours. While seven studies concluded that these mandatory-waiting-period laws may decrease births among unmarried women, six found evidence that the laws help women choose life, especially those who are adolescent, African American, Hispanic, or poor, or who would have to travel for an abortion. Notably, the study found that the more restrictive the laws, such as 72-hour waiting periods, the more effective they were at helping women choose life.

It’s easy to forget, but not until Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 did the Supreme Court allow states to enact waiting-period laws. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the effect on saving lives was all but immediate. Before Casey, the abortion rate dropped marginally, from a high of 29 abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age in 1981 to 26 in 1992. After Casey, the rate plunged to 11.6 in 2021 — a 55 percent decrease.

To be sure, the abortion rate dropped for other reasons as well. Sonogram technology has become more advanced, for example. But pro-lifers should not dismiss the significance of state-level restrictions as half-measures. Indeed, Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review has urged pro-lifers to seek to win protections for the unborn in “red” and “purple” states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

While that would restrict the abortion supply, pro-lifers should also seek to reduce abortion demand. They should advocate for more pro-life policies for pregnant women seeking health care, part-time jobs, and child-tax credits, while also seeking ways to deter boyfriends, husbands, and family members from pressuring women to abort.

Is nationalizing abortion strategy a bad idea? Of course not. It could help restrict the abortion pill, the main driver of the recent increase in the abortion rate. But pro-lifers should recognize that the movement needs to use all the peaceful, civil tools at its disposal.

Mark Stricherz

Washington, D.C.

The English colonies in America typically treated abortion after quickening (roughly four months) as a felony, but Maryland prosecuted a case at three months in 1656. Like all criminal law, abortion law was local, and the details varied from colony to colony. Although French and Spanish colonies prohibited abortion from conception, they did little to prosecute it in the first trimester.

Were our country to return to the colonial mentality — all criminal law defined locally, universal moral condemnation of abortion, and its prosecution as a crime only in the second and third trimesters — I would consider the happy result to be an absolute pro-life victory. Paul James Macrae, however, seems to characterize such a state of affairs as a pro-life defeat.

Dobbs v. Jackson, which sent the abortion question back to the states, is a blessing, not a curse. Thank God criminal law is still mostly local, so we have the freedom to move to places where the local law and customs suit us.

As a practical matter, it is difficult for a court to distinguish a chemically induced abortion from a naturally occurring miscarriage. Even today, the probability of miscarriage is high in the first trimester, some say as high as 25 percent. The last thing an innocent woman who suffers a miscarriage needs is a zealous prosecutor who would indict a ham sandwich.

Thomas More Zavist

Houston, Texas

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution affords “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…the equal protection of the laws.” True, the amendment does not designate humans in the womb as “citizens” of the United States. Sadly, it’s a stretch to imply that the amendment includes “citizens” still developing in their mothers’ wombs, as Paul James Macrae does.

By the same token, Roe v. Wade was overturned in a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in 2022. It took 50 years for the Constitution to be interpreted correctly on the matter of abortion. Associate Justice Samuel Alito said Roe was wrongly decided because the Constitution makes no specific mention of abortion. Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, “The Constitution neither outlaws abortion nor legalizes abortion.” Ergo, the Constitution is neutral on abortion.

The problem goes back further than when the 14th Amendment was ratified (1868). The Founding Fathers didn’t provide legal protection for the unborn in the Constitution (1789) or in the Bill of Rights (1791). Those legal provisions that jumpstarted America did not include specific moral matters such as abortion. The Founders probably viewed moral matters as taken-for-granted according to the Christian religion. If they could have foreseen today’s immoral madness, especially as it involves abortion, they would have had to debate the inclusion of the unborn in the Constitution. Even better, if the Founders had the luxury of the science of embryology at their disposal, being the God-fearing Christians they were, they definitely would have specified that “equal protection of the laws” includes the unborn.

Dan Arthur Pryor

Belvidere, New Jersey

PAUL JAMES MACRAE REPLIES:

I extend my thanks to these gentlemen for their thoughtful comments. As an up-and-coming writer, it is a great honor to hear from them. This especially applies to Mark Stricherz, as his book Why the Democrats Are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party was an important source for my article. I also thank him for the correction on North Dakota.

Though all these men raise good points, I have certain objections.

Mr. Stricherz characterizes my assessment of the pro-life movement as too “gloomy,” citing the expansion of heartbeat laws and the restrictions currently in place, mostly in the southern and central parts of the country. He cites this as evidence of the “states’ rights” approach to the issue. Though these are positive developments, we must conversely note that numerous states — New York, Vermont, Maryland, California, etc. — have become radically more pro-abortion since 1973. Whereas the pro-life movement once commanded support across the country, it is now performing a rearguard action. Instead of taking the offensive, pro-lifers are merely trying to keep their current holdouts from tumbling into the pro-abortion column. Make no mistake, abortion advocates have their sights set on these states.

The major focus of my article is on the pro-life movement’s national strategy of trying to overturn Roe on the basis of states’ rights. I have no objection to individual states’ pursuing different restrictions. However, in dropping the Human Life Amendment and reducing abortion to a states’ rights issue, pro-lifers sacrifice their moral authority, as Warren Carroll warned they would in Triumph magazine. If we believe that abortion is the taking of unborn life, we can accept no such compromise.

The wisdom of the states’ rights approach must be questioned further given the impotent response of the GOP and the pro-life movement to Dobbs. No prominent leader was willing to say that abortion is wrong because no one has the right to take an innocent life, and abortion cannot be allowed simply on the basis of “popular sovereignty.” As Abraham Lincoln declared in his debates with Stephen Douglas, a majority cannot deny the humanity of a minority simply because it is the majority. Yet that is exactly what the GOP said after Dobbs. As Stricherz mentions, the Republicans dropped support for a 20-week ban, which would have been far more permissive than France, Germany, etc. Pro-abortion forces portrayed this support as an outrageous affront, and so the Republicans meekly backtracked. I agree that more pro-life policies should be enacted, but the central issue is the declaration that all people are entitled to life, which can only come from the federal government.

I do not in principle have an issue with Thomas More Zavist’s statement of having criminal law defined locally combined with a national condemnation of abortion. But as Humberto Cardinal Medeiros said in 1974, the Supreme Court has made abortion a federal issue, not a state issue, and the Democrats remain committed to nationalizing it. Under such circumstances, the Republicans’ retreat to a states’ rights approach is conceding the offensive to abortion advocates and allowing them to dictate the terms of the debate.

I do not see a contradiction between the Human Life Amendment and states’ having different sentencing guidelines for abortion. We currently have crimes such as murder punishable at both the state and federal levels. As the West German Constitutional Court said in 1974, “The disappearance of the penal sanction leaves behind it a relevant gap in protection [for the unborn],” and “The state may not abdicate its responsibility even through the recognition of a ‘legally free area,’ by which the state abstains from the value judgment and abandons this judgment to the decision of the individual to be made on the basis of his own sense of responsibility.”

With regard to Dan Arthur Pryor’s point, the question of using the 14th Amendment to ban abortion has been advanced by scholars John Finnis, Robert P. George, and Josh Craddock. So, this is at least a possibility. To much disappointment, however, despite his being a former student of Finnis’s, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch did not support or even acknowledge Finnis’s amicus brief advancing this view. It must also be recognized that pro-abortion forces have no such legal scruples and have shown themselves more than prepared to run roughshod over the Constitution to enshrine abortion in law. Since virtually all legal scholars know the weakness of Roe’s legal rationale if the issue is ever brought before the high court again (sadly, the political bloodsport over judicial nominations that Roe ushered in will only increase), they will use a different argument than the “right to privacy.” Abortion advocates have already thrown around the idea of using other parts of the 14th Amendment, the hoped-for Equal Rights Amendment, or, outlandishly, the 13th Amendment, which banned slavery and involuntary servitude. Despite the absurdity of applying the latter to pregnancy (if you need more proof of the fundamentally anti-human and anti-family aspects of abortion advocacy, I can think of no better example), abortion advocates bluntly do not care; to them, anything is justifiable to keep abortion legal.

Does this mean pro-lifers should abandon all principles, too? No, but when faced with such opposition, all legal options for protecting the unborn — the 14th Amendment, the Living Constitution, the German court’s opinion, the Ninth Amendment, or the immortal words of William H. Seward that there is “a higher law than the Constitution” — should be explored, as this is the most important issue of the day.

Not the Same Mountain

As distressing and disappointing as it is to hear the Holy Father give assent to such statements as “all religions are paths to God” and “God wills the diversity of religions” — as retold by Pieter Vree in his column “Indiff’rent Strokes” (New Oxford Notebook, Nov.) — these sentiments are hardly new. Such comments were common in the RCIA class my wife and I attended back in 2008. It really didn’t matter, we were told, if you were Muslim or Hindu, Mormon or Christian. Having been raised Baptist — and convinced that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one comes to the Father but through Him — this indifferentism nearly scuppered our journey into the Catholic Church. It was only thanks to Dominus Iesus (2000), which Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger issued when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that we learned that such was not official Catholic teaching. All religions are not equal.

If we can learn anything from the trials and tribulations of Israel and Judah as related in the Old Testament, it is that God says over and over again, “I hate it when you worship other gods. And if you do, bad things will happen.” Yet they worshiped other gods, and bad things happened. “By the waters of Babylon, there we wept” (Ps. 137:1).

It took hundreds of years for the lesson of the First Commandment to sink into those stubborn hearts and minds once and for all. Ba’al and Ashera are not gods. Moloch is not god. Neither are the gods of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians. None of them is a path to God.

Oh, but didn’t the Jewish people have only a partial revelation? Surely, God has lightened up since the coming of Christ!

Didn’t St. Paul, seeing Athens full of idols, say to the Greeks, “Gee, guys, I see that you are very religious, and isn’t it great that Zeus, Athena, Hera, Apollo, and company will all lead you to the top of the spiritual mountain!” Uh, no. He told them that God had overlooked times of ignorance, and now it was time to repent and worship the God who made the world and everything in it (cf. Acts 17:16-34).

Though there is only one God, we must be equally clear that Allah (Islam), Brahman (Hinduism), Waheguru (Sikhism), et al. are not He. And though God can and does use sundry means to call people to Him, and acknowledging that “the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions,” seeing therein “a ray of that truth which enlightens all men” (Nostra Aetate), we cannot assume that all religions are paths to God. All religions? Aztecs cutting the beating hearts out of sacrificial victims? Incas sacrificing children in the Andes? Our fellow countrymen worshiping athletic “gods” or social media “celebrities” or themselves?

Even certain non-Christians acknowledge that not all paths lead up the same spiritual mountain. For example, Stephen Prothero, in his book God Is Not One, writes, “For more than a generation we have followed scholars and sages down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world in which all gods are one.” He calls this “wishful thinking” born of the otherwise commendable desire to stop religious killing. But, as he notes, the world’s religions “do not teach the same doctrines. They do not perform the same rituals. And they do not share the same goals.”

In short, they do not lead up the same mountain. Hence, Christ’s Great Commission to go and make disciples of all men. We cannot assume that “rays of truth,” pointers though they may be, will ultimately lead people to salvation.

Perhaps the Pope was simply being “polite” toward and “tolerant” of those of other faiths. But politeness and tolerance won’t lead souls to Heaven. “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle?” (1 Cor. 14:8). What the world needs from the Pontiff is a clarion call to follow Jesus Christ — and Him alone. Otherwise, will we be like the ancient Israelites and hear the voice of God saying, “I hate it when you worship other gods. And bad things will happen”?

Andrew M. Seddon, M.D.

Gainesville, Florida

Pieter Vree made some good points in his column “Indiff’rent Strokes,” but his assertion that there is no “broad pattern” of Catholic violence on the scale of the Islamic State or al-Qaeda is wrong. I suggest he Google the statistics on casualties inflicted by Italians during World War II. These fascists were baptized, confirmed, and all that. Though that was probably the extent of their Catholicism — whether they were practicing Catholics is debatable — they were still Catholics, and they were violent.

Ralph Overton

Rancho Murietta, California

PIETER VREE REPLIES:

The Italian Catholic fascists in World War II were indeed violent; there’s no doubt about it. They were fighting in a war, after all. But that’s beside the point, as I wasn’t talking history or discussing fascism. What I wrote was that there’s “no organized Catholic group that’s committing acts of religiously motivated violence today” — as in the present moment. Just as there’s no current Catholic equivalent of the Islamic State or al-Qaeda (or any of the numerous other violent Islamic groups presently in action), there’s no current Catholic equivalent of Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts, who were blessed by clerico-fascist Catholic priests as they marched to France in 1940, ultimately to fight in the Battle of the Alps.

Yet, even then, the Blackshirts weren’t an organized “Catholic” fighting force, per se. They were, first and foremost, Italian nationalists. In other words, their motivation wasn’t religious, as is that of much of the current brand of violent Islamic jihadists; it was nationalistic.

That “Last Chance” at Grace

Hurd Baruch’s article “Revisiting & Redefining Universal Salvation” (Nov.) contains a lot of interesting information upon which to meditate. One problem with his theory is that if everyone has a “last chance at grace” at the moment of death to determine their eternal destiny, the Last Judgment would have to consist of two groups: the saved and the obstinate and prideful who spurned the offer to repent. However, at the Last Judgment described by Christ in various parts of Scripture (e.g., Mt. 7:21-23), it appears that a number of people who are repentant and remorseful are destined to Hell nevertheless. I would appreciate hearing Mr. Baruch’s thoughts on this.

Brian Bookheimer

Westerville, Ohio

Hurd Baruch’s article escorting us through the problem of infinite justice and infinite mercy brought to mind a conversation I had about six years ago with a now-dead priest. I presented him with the — in my mind — impossibility of there being a Heaven for any saved person who learns he has a loved one who will be in Hell for eternity. He told me the beatific vision would supply joy sufficient to eradicate any desire, any emptiness. I suggested he might feel differently should he discover upon making the cut for Heaven that his father was suffering torment in Hell. He responded by saying he would feel no sympathy even for his father should he have merited Hell, that God’s judgment was good enough for him.

I was the priest’s guest on that occasion, so I did not tell him I thought he was insane. We are commanded to honor our fathers and mothers; how could that not include the lesser instruction to love them and to be distressed to learn of their being tortured? How could this priest feel elated while his father was roasting on a demon’s spit? Would he not remember, say, the day in 1947 when his father took him to a doubleheader at Ebbets Field, his first day at the old ballpark? Or rowboating in Central Park?

I have reflected on that conversation many times, often with a line in mind by Arthur Koestler, one of the brightest men of the 20th century, who wrote of his inability to believe in a “loving” God who made a perpetual Auschwitz for those of His children who proved unruly.

As a corporeal being, I will forever be part of the mother who bore me and the father who sired me, and who together gave me their eye and hair colors and their combined temperaments. Could I hear the words of welcome in Heaven and be so blinded by the beatific vision that I forget these earthly attachments? Memory is one of the four faculties of the soul, and if I were to be stripped of my memories, I would no longer be me. I would be a different person, as surely as if I were stripped of my intellect, will, and imagination.

The other side of the coin is this: Should my final act of contrition be insufficiently sincere, and I find myself on the demon’s spit, and should I learn that those dear to me are in eternal bliss — or even only one of them — I would take that as sufficient cause for my own eternal joy. It would be mine to say, “Take that, God! Thought you could punish me, eh? Gotcha!”

There is a chain-effect in the generations. Should everyone in my own family, progenitor or offspring, have a beloved relative in Hell, that would negate the joy their loved one— my remote relative — feels. For just as I would be crushed by dismay if a beloved relative of mine were absent from the celestial table, so would, say, my great-great-granduncle be stripped of joy to learn that his loved one is damned. This dismay would spill through the entire line of relatives. If my father — or his father, whom I never met — is in Hell, part of me is already there.

Thomas Barbarie

San Diego, California

Congratulations are in order for the pairing of Hurd Baruch’s article “Revisiting & Redefining Universal Salvation” and Pieter Vree’s New Oxford Notebook column “Indiff’rent Strokes” (Nov.). The first concerns the heresy of universal salvation (belief that there is no such thing as Hell), and the second its twin, indifferentism (the belief that it doesn’t make any difference what you believe so long as you’re sincere). These heresies are actually the same serious doctrinal error dressed up in different costumes. Hence, their pairing in this way was a stroke of genius, whether intended or not.

If you believe that in the end all will be saved, then correct belief certainly doesn’t matter. Hence, any religion — whether Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Islam, Hindu, etc. — is as good as another. In fact, no religion at all works just as well. Likewise, if all religions are paths to God and eternity, then it is difficult to see how anyone could fail to attain salvation. (The Nazis, for example, were anxious to re-instate the old Norse gods and their German equivalents, which, I suppose, would work, too.)

I was particularly amused by Mr. Baruch’s description of a third-century heresy that posited that in the end, creation would be restored to its original condition, with everyone saved, even the Devil. Imagine the scene at the Last Judgment when Ol’ Hairy Legs himself puts on the white robe of purity, grabs a handful of palm branches, and marches through the Pearly Gates singing the latest Marty Haugen ditty.

Sorry, folks, it’s not going to happen that way!

In order to accept these twin heresies, you must bypass or ditch a whole host of Scripture passages. For example, Our Savior tells His disciples, “Enter ye in the straight gate: for wide is the gate and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go thereat: Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Mt. 7:13-14). More to the point, He describes the final scene at the Last Judgment: “Then he shall say also to them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt. 25:41).

Our Savior mentions Hell 15 times in the New Testament, and each mention is accompanied by the sternest of warnings. The motivation for rejecting the existence of Hell is the revulsion felt by imagining that a just and loving God could ever condemn to eternal punishment a soul of His own creation. However, we must remember that condemnation to Hell is our own choice, not God’s. At our particular judgment, each of us will see the condition of our soul as it is, unmasked. Standing before the Throne of Grace, we will have a choice: to stay and bask in the joy of unspeakable love or to flee it. The choice will be the one we made by the conduct of our lives and the state of our souls as we pass into eternity.

As to the belief that one religion is just as good as another, we know with certainty from Scripture a number of truths. First, Christ established a Church (cf. Mt. 16:18). Second, He commanded His Apostles, the first bishops of this Church, to go forth into the whole world to preach and baptize (cf. Mt. 28:19). He showed them how they were to offer worship (cf. Lk. 22:19-20). He gave them the power to forgive sins (cf. Jn. 20:23). He gave this Church the gift of infallibility (cf. Lk. 10:16). Finally, He established Himself as the only way to the Father: “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (Jn. 14:6).

The idea that Christ would establish an ecclesia to carry on the work of salvation and then simply cast it aside as only one path among many is ludicrous on its face. We have certain revelation as to the correct — and only — path to eternal bliss with Him in Heaven, and an equally certain revelation as to the consequences of disobedience. Instead of casting about for an easier way, we need to accept these twin revelations, take up our crosses daily, and follow Him.

Hank Hassell

Flagstaff, Arizona

HURD BARUCH REPLIES:

The view Hank Hassell expresses, that “condemnation to Hell is our own choice, not God’s,” is the one I expressed in my article. I don’t know whether his words “the choice will be the one we made by the conduct of our lives and the state of our souls as we pass into eternity” were intended to deny the possibility of what might be termed a “last clear chance” at the moment of our death. Recognition of the latter, based on the writings of popes and other holy religious, was the main thrust of my article.

I can well appreciate Thomas Barbarie’s concern for his deceased family members, as none of us can be absolutely certain that all our own deceased relatives going back many years went to Heaven or are still in Purgatory and eventually headed there. The Church’s answer to our concerns is to pray for their souls — especially on All Souls’ Day — and to offer good works, such as Masses, for their salvation. Personally, I’ve used the Seraphic Mass Association, headquartered in Pittsburgh, to offer 30 days of Gregorian Masses for a good many deceased relatives and friends, although I had no reason to doubt their sanctity.

At the same time, I cannot agree with Mr. Barbarie’s sentiment that Heaven — or at least the joys thereof — would be impossible “for any saved person who learns he has a loved one who will be in Hell for eternity.” This suggests that Barbarie regards his own morality as superior to God’s. Is God not the Just Judge? I hope Barbarie will take the bottom line of my article to heart: Any relative of his (or of mine) who is, in fact, in Hell is there only because of his free choice.

As for Brian Bookheimer’s concern, the Church teaches that even a great sinner can repent and be converted at the end of his life, albeit not escaping the pains of Purgatory. And the holy sources I quoted in my article suggest that even when a person appears to the outside world to be dead, he is offered a final chance by Jesus to express contrition and a desire to be saved. What the evildoers in Matthew 7:21-23 said to Jesus were not words of contrition but a claim of entitlement to mercy.

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Christopher Merrick

Yardley, Pennsylvania

At this point in my life, I only take the NOR, The Wanderer, Chronicles, and The Wall Street Journal. I took National Review for many years, but I canceled when they came out for “gay marriage.” (I’m sure William F. Buckley Jr. is spinning in his grave.) I also took Touchstone but canceled that, too, because I couldn’t take how political they claim to be but are “too good” even to mention the name Trump.

Edward Wilneff

Racine, Wisconsin

The only things worth reading these days are Salvo, First Things, and the NOR.

Daniel E. Boyle

Chesapeake, Virginia

In his editorial “Holding the Line” (Oct.), the editor mentions Reader’s Digest as being among the recently deceased magazines. I still get it every month!

Bennett Smith

Wilmington, Delaware

Ed. Note: We were mistaken. Reader’s Digest Canada and Reader’s Digest UK shut down, but the U.S. version remains in print. We apologize for the error.

After reading about the financial predicament the NOR is in (editorial, Oct.), I would like to make a suggestion that might solve your several problems.

Like many states across the country, Montana has had to endure inflation and a rising cost of living. But take a look at our tax structure and the many small towns that would welcome your company, staff, and writers. Gov. Greg Gianforte is a strong Christian and a former businessman supported by the Republican Party. Because our state is so large, we have two dioceses. The western half is blessed to have the Most Rev. Austin Vetter as bishop. The western half of Montana is also more beautiful because it is heavily forested. The winters here are milder than they used to be.

I do hope you’ll take a serious look at what Montana has to offer to see if it’s something that can help the NOR continue to function.

LaVern Jacobs

Bozeman, Montana

Regarding your adverse financial circumstances: Why are you still in California? You should give us some insight into that.

Stephen J. Morisani

Bay Minette, Alabama

Ed. Note: As noted in our October editorial, the skyrocketing cost of insurance is making it difficult to survive in California, which is one reason so many businesses and residents are fleeing the Golden State. Should we join the exodus? We’ve certainly entertained the thought. What keeps us here is something rather simple: our roots are here, and our families are here. Of the six people named on our masthead (not including our Contributing Editors), three are native Californians whose forebears settled here, and one is a transplant. All four have children (and two even grandchildren) here. These are ties we aren’t eager to break or see broken for financial reasons. Moreover, inflation, price-gouging, and cost increases, though steeper here than elsewhere, aren’t limited to California. They are part of a national trend, affecting even Montana — although LaVern Jacobs does make the Treasure State sound very appealing!

Enclosed is a contribution to the NOR, a publication I appreciate and value for its thought-provoking articles and reviews. You, the editor, deserve praise for your integrity, forthrightness, and love for Christ and His Church. May God continue to bless you, your family, and the contributors to and readers of the NOR.

Mary Pearl

Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania

I thank God for the work that you and your woefully underpaid staff and associates continue to do through the grace and compassion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Please know that there are many who continue to support your efforts through prayers and petitions to Him.

My personal prayer for all of you is that through your ongoing efforts, the message of love and salvation, which He has given to all believers, will continue to reach out to and strengthen all of us in the various corners of the world in which we reside. May the promise of Ephesians 3:20-21 be expressed in power via the work of the Holy Spirit in and through the message you bring through the pages of the NOR.

David C. Anderson, M.D., F.A.C.S. (ret.)

Florence, Arizona

Every once in a while, my friend slips me a $100 bill and tells me to give it to a charity. I was going to give it to the Archdiocese of Military Services, since I’m retired military and I think seminarians need support, but I read your editorial and knew you needed it more. God bless your work.

LTC Donna Cunningham (ret.)

Warriors Mark, Pennsylvania

It seems that what you are trying to do in keeping the NOR going is impossible. It makes a fellow proud to be even a small part of it. If the day ever comes when you have to say that you just can’t go on, I’ll be grateful that you kept it going for as long as you did — not least because I still correspond with a Florida inmate I “met” through the letters column. It’s a friendship I treasure. And I treasure the publication that made it possible.

Albert Alioto

San Francisco, California

I would undoubtedly continue to subscribe despite any increase in price you deem necessary to keep the NOR going. I am not sure, however, whether I would renew if the NOR were to go online only. Knowing myself, I would subscribe once but then would find, as I have with other publications that have made such a move, that it is too much of a bother to read an entire journal online — I have read every issue of the NOR in its entirety since discovering it in 1976 when it was still the American Church News — and would let it lapse, reading only the occasional article to which a link might be sent to me by a friend, or which I might find through my own Internet searches.

William J. Tighe

Allentown, Pennsylvania

We appreciate your magazine. Our recommendation: keep the Christmas rate of $24 but raise the regular rate to $50 per year. At ten issues per year, that comes out to only $5 per magazine.

John & Sheila Kippley

Cincinnati, Ohio

Your appeal for donations, and the prospect that the NOR might succumb to the financial realities of print media, has left me distraught. How would I replace my monthly NOR?

I recently read Raymond Arroyo’s biography of Mother Angelica, and it struck me how similar your mission and struggle are to hers. She had a steadfast vision for an independent, orthodox Catholic television network to advance the truth as defined by the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. As a longtime reader of the NOR and longtime viewer of EWTN, I assure you that this synergistic combination of Catholic thought provides ample material for our weekly Catholic study/RCIA group. Without these, I would struggle to keep our meetings fresh. And it’s working. Our group has confirmed over a dozen new Catholics each Easter for five years running, and most are eager readers of the NOR, which we receive through your Scholarship program (each issue is read and reread and passed around).

My late father’s gift to me of a subscription to the NOR, and his dying wish that I return to the Mass, restored my faith. The NOR helps me maintain it. I cannot risk the loss of this crutch. The NOR cannot fold!

Steven Moos

Snake River Correctional Institution

Ontario, Oregon

I’ve enclosed a small charitable contribution. Yes, it’s only one-thousandth of your goal, but still.

I really enjoyed Rhapsody and Redolence: The Crystal Decade, a volume of verse by Caitlin Smith Gilson and Carol Scott, which I never would have heard of had it not been for the NOR. It’s been cool to see Prof. Smith Gilson continue to write for the NOR and to respond, graciously and humbly, to readers’ comments.

I grew up an evangelical Protestant under serious legalists whose religion stole my joy. As soon as I left home, I stopped practicing religion altogether. Long story short: I made a lot of bad choices and wound up in prison. But it has given me a chance to start over.

I never would have seriously considered becoming a Catholic had I not seen, when I returned to the faith after seven years’ absence, what a ruinous shambles the evangelical world is in, beyond the dysfunction of my own family. I met a Russian Orthodox guy and nearly joined his Church, but I found out the Orthodox have the same legalistic attitudes as the fundamentalists I was trying to get away from! So I started learning about the Catholic Church and realized that’s where I belong. I entered the Church in 2016.

The honeymoon is over! Even though I’ve encountered plenty of Catholic fundamentalists, including in the NOR, if it were not for Cicero Bruce’s interview with Smith Gilson (“What Is the Purpose of Poetry?” April), which spurred me to buy her book, I can honestly say I wouldn’t be doing this. I know $25 isn’t much when stacked up against the $250,000 you need, but it’s a lot for me to give.

Smith Gilson and Carol Smith’s poetry and art resonate powerfully with bridal mysticism. God has used that, and the examples of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and St. Faustina Kowalska, to touch and heal my heart. It’s crucial for Beauty to pierce, as it were, the eye of the soul so that Truth and Goodness may enter as well. It is the goodness of God that leads to repentance (cf. Rom. 2:4), knowing His true character, how gentle and kind He is — not being afraid of His wrath. When the world feels the warmth and sees the light coming from the heart of the Church, souls will be drawn in by the Holy Spirit. The world will be drawn to Christians’ carrying around the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And then Our Lady’s promise at Fatima will come true: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”

Please thank Our Lady and the Holy Spirit, and Caitlin Smith Gilson and Carol Smith, for this small gift. I pray God multiplies my one-thousandth and causes a windfall above and beyond your goal to stay afloat. Jesus took five loaves and two fish, fed over 5,000 people, and had 12 baskets left over. He can do that for the NOR, too.

Mark Kirkpatrick

Snake River Correctional Institution

Ontario, Oregon

THE EDITOR REPLIES:

We offer a heartfelt thank-you to all the NOR readers and supporters who’ve come to our aid during our fundraising effort with financial contributions, prayers, encouragement, and well wishes. We wish we could print all the correspondence we’ve received over the past few months, but space does not allow it. The foregoing is, we think, a representative sample, for which we are eternally grateful. We know there are many organizations worthy of your support, as Donna Cunningham indicates, and we are humbled that you have chosen the NOR as the recipient of your largesse — or your widow’s mite, as in the case of Barbara Westrick, Mark Kirkpatrick, and many others.

Since October we’ve been trying to raise $250,000 to stave off increasing subscription rates for the next two years. Time will tell whether we reach our goal and can maintain our current price plans. As of this writing, we’ve raised $154,386. To help us get closer to our goal, please send your contribution to:

New Oxford Review
1069 Kains Ave.
Berkeley CA 94706

Make checks and money orders payable to New Oxford Review. Credit card contributions can be made via our secure server at newoxfordreview.org/donations or by phoning 510-526-5374. The NOR is a nonprofit organization and has 501(c)(3) status with the Internal Revenue Service. Donations are, therefore, tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Readers who wish to enable more prisoners like Messrs. Moos and Kirkpatrick (and Mr. Alioto’s pen pal) to receive gratis subscriptions to the NOR may designate their contributions for our Scholarship Fund. Those who wish to enable more people in general to subscribe to the NOR at our current low prices may designate their contributions for our General Fund, in furtherance of our fundraising goal.

We thank you immensely for your support!

To submit a Letter to the Editor, click here: https://www.newoxfordreview.org/contact-us/letters-to-the-editor/