Letters to the Editor

Nothing Personal: The dung show
BY AMY REITER
(10/04/99)

I know people like yourself make careers of sensationalism and negativism, but I think your view on the Mormon-owned KSL TV station was out of line. It is comforting to know that someone, or in this case some group, has the backbone to stand up for a moral philosophy while the rest of us just accept the declining standards of language, ethics and morality as "just reality." Because you don't have the fortitude to hold to a higher standard of behavior that elevates the human condition doesn't mean you should berate those that do. Your doing so demonstrates that you're part of the societal problem instead of the cure.

-- Jeff Richards

Our lady of lies
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
(10/04/99)

As a priest, I agree with Christopher Hitchens' assessment of the situation in Croatia re: Medjugorje. No Catholic is required to give credence to any such phenomena, but many do. That they do is more a question for psychologists and sociologists, since this very human quest for magical phenomena to explain something in our lives is not limited to religious enthusiasm. UFO aficionados come to mind easily, among others.

But Hitchens simply has to invest his own vitriol and apparently anti-Catholic (if not anti-religion) judgments into the article. The undertone of contempt for religious devotional practice and history, and for those who practice it, is not journalism. He is preaching his own cynicism with religious zeal. His contempt continues to the local people as well, as if the history of the region over the last two centuries has no part in how life is lived there.

Hitchens wasn't writing a journalistic piece about either the pope, the Catholic Church, the local church, any local belief system or the socio-historic context of Croatia. He simply vented his own hubris and general attitude of contempt of the rest of the world in an easy essay. No doubt his pub bills were due and he had to make some money quick. Or is that simply my cynicism?

-- Father John Byrne
Baltimore

What would Christopher Hitchens have Mary say that would be more meaningful than what she told the children at Medjugorje? Does he blame her, or a spiritual hoax, as he sees it, for Croatian hatred? If his point is to expose hypocrisy, he needn't travel so far to find it. But if he wants to prove that Mary did not appear, he should realize that this can never be proved, or disproved.

-- Frank Dorman
Richmond, Va.

Reading Mr. Hitchens' vitriolic attack against the Virgin of Medjugorje made me feel like converting to Catholicism out of sheer spite. His hatred of any form of spirituality is palpable throughout his writing -- always dripping with words like "delusion" and "hallucination." His critique of the Dalai Lama, published in Vanity Fair a few years back, contained a statement to the effect that reincarnation is claptrap, without backing it up with a single informed study or expert opinion -- Hitchens thinks reincarnation is bogus, therefore it is bogus. Same with religious visions -- they are "hallucinations" because Hitchens believes so, and that settles it; anyone who sees or believes in miraculous visions is ipso facto "delusional."

I'm no Catholic -- I'm not even a Christian -- but Hitchens turns my stomach. He just goes to show that militant atheists are just as narrow-minded, uptight and bigoted as militant religious zealots.

-- Crystal Di'Anno
Oakland, Calif.

Steve Forbes finds religion
BY JAKE TAPPER
(10/05/99)

A fundamentally laissez-faire party that bribes voters with promises to manhandle every social "ill" that comes along -- what's wrong with this picture? Your article "Forbes Finds Religion" aptly demonstrates the schizophrenia at the heart of a Republican Party still overly fond of the Reagan era. Only now it's Steve Forbes (instead of Robert Dole) who's saying, "I'll be your Ronald Reagan." Forbes has gone from an amusing but relatively benign capitalist-cum-presidential hopeful to a downright loathsome huckster for whatever cause he thinks will sweep him into office. One imagines that Forbes couldn't care less about his own ideological inconsistencies or about the singular hypocrisy of ultra-conservative politicians that he's embracing -- it seems all too apparent now that he just wants something to show for all the money he's spent.

-- Teri Bostian

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