Letters to the Editor

Rutherford Institute sues Columbine officials
BY DAVE CULLEN
(10/08/99)

It beguiles me how people who dub themselves Christian do not seem to have understood how much the Christ I studied in the Gospels was so dead against public displays of piety. Faith, when it is strong, speaks in demeanor, not in forcing icons down the throats of passersby. Maybe these irate folk in Columbine should read the Second Commandment they so would like to have hanging next to their precious tiles.

As far as the "Christ is Lord" inscription hanging in a public school, such a display is so off-base I cannot believe it's even being argued; think of it: Public funds that support the upkeep of the school will eventually be utilized to clean the tiles. If a public employee cleaning the tile is not the merging of church and state at a basic level, then I must be from a United States in a parallel dimension. The message of "Christ is Lord" would be part of the Columbine institution of learning, making impressions on hundreds of young people daily as they stride past. Some might be offended, and some just might perceive it as an affirmation of their supposed superiority. And wasn't that part of the school's problem?

This present obscenity in Columbine is nothing more than religious grandstanding, just the kind that Christ may have been teaching about in the parable of the Pharisee and the plebeian. Funny how folks who call themselves Christians appear to ignore Christ's teaching just when they needn't.

-- Peter D. Barry
Austin, Texas

The fundamental problem facing school officials at Columbine is a problem that our nation is going to have even more trouble with in the future. Our society is, for the most part, Christian. Christianity, unlike other religions, does not teach tolerance of other beliefs, but rather teaches that those in other belief systems are clearly wrong in their approach to life. Many Christians even teach that everyone who believes differently than they are doomed to eternal damnation.

However, our culture as a whole is secular, and we teach tolerance of others' religious beliefs. This puts America at large in a volatile, contradictory position with most Christians.

Creating tiles for the school that say "Jesus is Lord" may seem innocent enough to most Christians, but it is highly offensive to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and agnostics.

-- Rob Redmond

"The River"
BY EDWARD HOOPER
(10/06/99)

If Edward Hooper's theories are proven true, his story has the potential to be the most earth shaking news item of the last decade of the century. The medical, social and political implications are enormous.

The scientific establishment is not allowing Hooper's theories to be debated freely, though. The medical community, with its authoritarian ideology, is attempting to quash discussion, and are dragging their feet in trying to prove or disprove his arguments, even though Hooper offers several ways in which they can accomplish this.

-- Hector F. Mejias

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

The article by Christopher Hitchens is one of the most hate-filled, anti-Catholic and anti-Croatian diatribes I have had the misfortune to come across.

Just a few examples that contradict Hitchens' statements: 1) The Virgin Mary appeared to the children in 1981 ( his sarcasm about the "unoriginality" of a girl's name is pathetic -- would it have suited him better if she would have had a movie star's name instead of her own?) It happened 10 years before the breakup of communist Yugoslavia. Since this occurred some 40 years after World War II, his derogatory remark calling the blessed Mother "Our Lady of the Ustashe" referring to Croatia's Nazi puppet regime's Ustashas, it is more than insulting. Only an extreme Serbophile could come up with such a propaganda statement.

2) The children's brainwaves were tested by impartial international scientists and doctors and found to have substantially altered brainwaves during the manifestations. 3) The "ugly new basilica" is a typical church, built in the 1930s. Only a church-hater could find criticism with it. 4) The Vatican has never rushed approvals of such cases until thorough research is conducted, which typically takes many years.

5) While Muslim minarets were destroyed by Croats during the unfortunate one-year war between the Bosnian Croats and Muslims, at the same time Muslims were destroying Catholic churches and monasteries. Still, a much larger number of mosques, minarets and Catholic churches and monasteries were destroyed by the Serbs during their relentless five years of bombing and atrocities and massive "ethnic cleansing" of 75 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992 to late 1995. Medjugorje never had any Muslim mosques as it has a homogenous Catholic population, so none could have been destroyed. If Hitchens actually is referring to the city of Mostar, most of the city was already destroyed by the Serbs before the Croat-Muslim conflict.

6) Hitchens' ridiculous claim that Croats were destroying Muslim minarets under the eyes of NATO forces shows his total ignorance. The war between Croats and Muslims of 1993-94 ended in 1994 with the Washington Accords. NATO came to Bosnia in 1995 after the Dayton Agreements and the end of the Bosnian war.

7) Cardinal Stepinac, whom Hitchens falsely describes as a Nazi collaborator, was openly opposed to Nazism and Fascism, preaching from the Zagreb cathedral's pulpit against the treatment of Jews and Serbs. He saved hundreds of Jews personally, which can be confirmed by the Jewish community in Zagreb. In communist Yugoslavia he was convicted at a sham trial for collaboration, when just the opposite was true. He was a holy man and deserved beatification by the Vatican.

Hitchens has obviously swallowed lock, stock and barrel all of the 70 years' worth of Serb propaganda, especially that aimed against Croatia. What he knows about former Yugoslavia fits under a baby's nail. Does he know that after the founding of the "Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes" in 1918, the kingdom came under total rule of Serbia in 1929, with the Serb king Alexander abolishing the constitution of equality of the three nations, renaming it "Yugoslavia" and establishing a royal dictatorship? Does he know that Serbs ruled from Belgrade while Croats and Slovenes were treated as second-class citizens, with many political murders and imprisonments? Even Albert Einstein and a group of prominent American citizens wrote an open letter of condemnation in the New York Times in 1932 regarding the cruel treatment of Croats and the killing of one of their well-known intellectuals. Even the Croatian language was subjugated, and made into "Serbo-Croatian" to deny Croatia's originality. Most army officers, police and officials were Serbs, who spread all over Yugoslavia, especially in Croatia and its most beautiful or richest areas, such as the Adriatic coast and Slavonia. The idea of Greater Serbia was in full swing.

In World War II, Tito, a Croat, led the overwhelmingly Croat partisan resistance against the Nazi puppet regime established in Croatia. A mere 2 percent of Croats approved of the Ustasha regime. Serbs also had a Nazi puppet regime that killed tens of thousands of Jews, Gypsies and Croats. Nowhere is there any mention of that "little" fact in Hitchens' writings. After World War II, all power again went to Serbia . Even though Tito was a Croat, he was a communist first, and he obviously found the Serbs better communists than his fellow Croats.

When the first free elections were held in 1990 Yugoslavia, Croatia and Slovenia chose democracy, while Serbia chose communism. Since there was no compromise, it became the reason for the breakup of Yugoslavia and Serbia's aggression against the other republics.

Hitchens has let his hate for anything Catholic and Croatian and his obvious siding with anything Serbian totally cloud his objectivity -- if he ever had one. Being on the side of the Serbs in spite of all the carnage they have caused in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo puts this into serious doubt.

-- Hilda M. Foley

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