LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Additional reading on Obama mandate

Posted

TO THE EDITOR:

Your recent editorial (Ut unum sint, March 8, 2012) prompts me to suggest that your readers may also be interested in reading editorials on the subject of the Obama Healthcare Mandate in America magazine (March 5, 2012), Commonweal magazine (March 9, 2012) and E.J. Dionne’s columns on the subject cited in your editorial.

In his treatment of the “prudential judgment,” St. Thomas makes it clear that consultation is a necessary part of making a prudential judgment. Reading the above cited material will help provide some of the consultation for the judgments Catholics are being asked to make in respect to the Obama Healthcare bill together with the recent mandates connected with the implementation of the bill. I also strongly suggest that derogatory labels like “useful idiots” applied even to those perceived to be our enemies have no place in a Catholic newspaper that professes to follow Christ’s mandate “to love even our enemies.”

(Rev.) Richard C. Maynard

Warwick

Editor’s Note: Readers may also find the letter of Bishop William Lori, Chairman of the U.S.C.C.B. Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, to the editors of America magazine (March 19, 2012) helpful in their consultation. Further factual information on the Obama Healthcare Mandate can also be found at: http://usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/ and http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/mandate/