Dear Editor: For years, Catholics in our diocese have endured insults from other Catholics who insist that, by questioning their gospel of government dependency programs and the undermining of real economic opportunity for the poor means, we do not care about the poor and that we need to be lectured on being as compassionate as they believe themselves to be. Now we are told that we are “anti-environment,” that we actually desire dirty air and dirty water, if we so much as question any aspect of what radical environmentalists propose.

Patricia Kenney (Readers’ Forum, May 23) cites Chuck Hagel as an authority for projecting disasters that have no proven basis in scientific plausibility from truthful science. It’s hard to understand why many religious people are so quick to assume the infallibility of the anti-religious, especially someone like Mr. Hagel, a left-wing ideologue whose Defense Department displayed a hostile undermining of the chaplaincy and who, when senator, could not even agree to sign a resolution denouncing anti-Semitism in Russia. Actually, I do understand the compliance, but such matters are the subjects for a book, not a letter.

Suffice it to say that describing the climate change movement that has in some countries outlawed debate, persecuted dissent, ruined careers, affected massive government power grabs and pursued international laws to do the same – all of which are being pursued by left-wing Americans – as fascistic, does not constitute overstatement motivated only by a failure to appreciate the angelic flawlessness of this movement.

JONATHAN MAYHUE
Brooklyn Heights