Correspondence

From time to time we get encouraging letters from secret allies within the administration, such as the one below:

Dear Steve,

I wanted to convey to you that the reason why I am at USAID is because of you. From way back, even before graduate school, I was aware of the Population Research institute and of the work you were doing. I just want you to know that you inspired me. You are the reason why I and a lot of others have gone to work here. Hopefully, the fruits of your labor are coming to bear, at least slowly.

Name Withheld by Request

Dear Steve:

The riches of a country are its future citizens, its future generations. It is incredible that we do not understand the lessons of Europe. Some people still think the same way Malthus thought in the past. Something is really bad in the minds of the people who want to control population without respect for those same people they say they want to help.

We hope President Bush’s changes will affect USAID, too. We are still fighting against anti-life institutions supported by the aid of the American people and government. It is difficult to understand how this is possible with the [pro-life] policy of the Bush Administration.

Dr. Fernando Carbone

II Profile Congress, Lima, Peru

Dear Mr. D’Agostino,

Three questions, if I may [Re: 4 November 2005 Weekly Briefing: Smiles for Scalito]:

1. For the record: Wasn’t Planned Parenthood v. Casey decided in 1992?

2. You wrote: “Let us note that refraining from the commission of an intrinsic evil is always required, but preventing others from committing evil is not.” Isn’t this just what “I’m personally opposed, but…” voters always say? Most Democrats who say they’re pro-life use this same escape-hatch from the responsibility of the voting booth — do they not?

3. How can you call Reagan pro-life? I know that that’s one of our mantras. That’s part of his “official biography.” But Reagan, as governor of California, introduced legalized abortion to his state. As president, he gave us the benighted enemy of unborn babies Sandra Day O’Connor (as a cynical concession to the vengeful and vituperative feminists of the time who threatened to bring Reagan down as an old patriarchal chauvinist). He gave us the enemy of unborn babies Anthony Kennedy. Actor Reagan developed a knack for knowing when to say “the right things,” but what IS his “pro-life” legacy after all is said and done and written? Isn’t it time to tell God’s truth, even if it means giving up our glorious golden legend about Reagan’?

4. After your lengthy essay with your tortured excuses of Alito for some distressingly anti-life opinions of his, your final two sentences are jarring non-sequiturs. What you’ve done, it seems to me, is to offer a defense of the “justices” of Nazi Germany, who “followed precedent” set by Hitler’s barbaric and murderous henchmen, and a defense of the “justices” of America’s antebellum South, who “followed precedent” in failing to set free their fellow human beings called “slaves.”

What is Alito first and foremost, a man with a Catholic conscience and moral obligations before God and his fellow human beings, or a “justice” of some “values-free” man-made branch of some secular man-made government of some man-made secular (now-pagan?) society?

What ought Alito, or any of us, reply to Our Eternal Judge when He asks. “What did you do when this particular human being I created was slaughtered under your man-made ‘laws’?” Will Alito simply reply, “I was merely doing my assigned job, Your Divine Honor, which was to uphold legally respectable ‘precedents’ laid upon my humble and lowly office by amoral or immoral ‘justices’ who preceded me?” What might we suppose Pontius Pilate replied to God, if and when he was asked the same question?

J.P. Richardson, Jr., Minnesota

Mr. Richardson:

1. The U.S. Supreme Courts PP v. Casey was decided in 1992, not the 3^rd Circuit’s.

2. No. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas and many other Catholic moralists argue against the notion that law should forbid all evils. That is a Calvinist notion. Law is meant to safeguard the common good, and when the Church worked to Christianize barbarians, she often tolerated certain evil practices for a long time because trying to eliminate them would do more harm than good. Lying and prostitution are two examples from St. Thomas: Outlawing each causes more harm than good, so both should be tolerated (within certain limits). Abortion may be on a graver plain, but the fact is, it was not within Alito’s authority, nor within his power, to forbid abortion.

3. Reagan was officially pro-life as president and did some pro-life things, but it’s true he wasn’t an achiever on the question. Perhaps he shouldn’t be called pro-life.

4. I would note that no one who promises to overturn Roe v. Wade or any other long-standing Supreme Court precedent would be confirmed by the Senate. There are too many pro-abortion Republicans, and the notion of promising to overturn precedents has been delegitimized. Opposing someone who makes no such promise would only gratify our own self-righteous feelings. I’d love to see the Supreme Court overturn Griswold the decision striking down lows against contraception, but I wouldn’t make a promise to do so a litmus test before I supported someone. Such a promise would doom the nominee, just like a promise to overturn Roe would. We must choose based on judicial philosophy and record.

JAD