The Catholic Register - Readers Speak Out

Written by Catholic Register Readers,

Don’t blame China

In your April 27 editorial about the Olympic Games and politics (“It’s all political”) you imply that the Chinese are exploiting their host responsibilities of these games for propaganda purposes. It may well be that a country wants to show off when they are in the hosting position and, indeed, why not?

However, for a country the size of Canada with about 30 million people and a country the size of China with more than one billion people, governing cannot be compared. We are lucky if we can get 5,000 people on Parliament Hill for a rally of any kind while in China they can have one million people gathering in the blink of an eye. When you have hordes of people gathered anywhere there is always the chance of some getting out of hand and while a few thousand are manageable, a million or more are not so easily managed. Different tactics may be needed. And don’t for a moment think that when there are protests here in Canada that the protagonists, and indeed the participants, are not under some police surveillance.

Should Canada have anything to say about China and how they are managing their country? They have managed their economy so that their population is functioning in a very capable manner. Providing work and food for so many people is a feat indeed.

The Tibetan question is something they will work out as progress develops in that country. It cannot be done in the blink of an eye. It is also possible it was not the Tibetan people who started this turmoil and certainly it was not the Dalai Lama, whom they follow, who started it. It may well have been outside forces that fomented the unrest at this particular time for a particular purpose.

Should we really condemn China for its actions?

Sheelagh M. Barry
Pointe Claire, Que.

Tony Blair’s sins

Your April 20 photo and caption on Tony Blair is like an ink spot on a clean white shirt.

Not once has he humbled himself to express regret for the conscious criminal decisions he made on Iraq. On the contrary, did he not say, more than once, that he had no regrets for those decisions and that he would do it again? He meant again to fabricate and distort information to enable him to invade a sovereign country on which he rained death, mutilation, destruction of property with abandon, displacement of millions of people and robbing the youth of that country of a future.

He has shown that he has no room in his heart for humility, to apologize to his own countrymen for the deceit and fraud he perpetrated on them. He lacks the gift of the Holy Spirit to confront the people of Iraq and apologize to them for the death and destruction and waste brought upon them.

There are many people on this Earth who are striving for justice, the justice Jesus was talking about, and they are being shunted aside by our warped society in favour of these Teflon personages.

F. Arturi
Etobicoke, Ont.

Two Christianities

The April 13 edition of The Register is a classic study of two polar opposite approaches to Christianity. The first approach, highlighted by Michael Swan’s book review of Jesus for President, is the trendy, hip and certainly safe approach of America bashing. Here, all one needs to do to be a good Christian is to identify the United States as the source of all evil in the world, cozy up to the latest hippy theologian/author who backs the same ideology and then heap scorn on our “imperially baptized religion” that has apparently left much of the world in ruins. Very safe, very hip. You’ll be the favourite at all the neighbourhood wine and cheeses.

The second approach, slightly more difficult, is described in John Bentley Mays’ fine article “Conversion is good news” describing how an Italian journalist, Magdi Allam, converted to Catholicism from Islam. Unlike Swan’s comfortable theology, Allam’s road to Christianity was difficult and thoroughly dangerous. I don’t know the reasons for Allam’s conversion to the faith, but I can be quite certain that it was something worth dying for. Very unsafe, very unhip and very impressive.

Maria Loreto
Toronto, Ont.

Newspaper fallacies

John Bentley Mays said in his April 27 column (“Internet is death knell for the daily newspaper”) that the North American newspaper has helped advance democracy. So it has, if by democracy he means the process of voting (wishing) for what you deem right and then being content with what you get from government.

But I define democracy as voting for what is right and then making sure government delivers it. I view the modern commercial newspaper as an industrial device for making industrial societies, in which democracy is impossible, tolerable for ordinary men who would prefer democracy if it didn’t require sustained independent effort typical of the self-employed.

I have a strong impression the modern newspaper is, perhaps for that reason, fundamentally dishonest: I doubt it will actually publish an argument which it cannot answer but which attacks its most fundamental assumptions and most cherished illusions. I do know from my own experience that a number of periodicals “committed to non-violence in the cause of pro-life” won’t publish arguments destructive of that position which nonetheless they never answer.

Colin Burke
Port au Port, Nfld.

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