Dear Editor: While at the gym, I overheard a lady nearby say, “I can’t understand how anyone can kill another person.” I could not help but interject and say, “That is only because we tend to see others as we are. There are many people who were never trained or educated in what is right or wrong, consequently, they have a very different conscience from those who are.”

Dear Editor: Having the opportunity to attend other parishes twice this week – one for a Christmas concert and another for weekday Mass followed by the Miraculous Medal Novena – has not brought me the usual joy that I previously found visiting neighboring churches. There was something missing. It truly saddened me not to see the Nativity displayed in either church.

Dear Editor: It was an interesting juxtaposition of Joe Heller’s political cartoon about the stresses of Christmas shopping on one side of the paper and a letter to the editor agreeing with the commentary of Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta about how racism is a disease.

Dear Editor: Columnist George Weigel (Dec. 17) wrote compellingly of young peoples’ ignorance of American history and civic institutions. Interestingly, in her report on the return of the Christmas spirit to Grand Army Plaza that appeared in the same issue, Antonina Zielinska evinced the very thing Weigel was bemoaning. In explaining why a manger at Grand Army Plaza might face scrutiny, Zielinska chalked it up to “city regulations on separation of church and state and all.”

Dear Editor: A letter (Dec. 3) illustrates common ignorance regarding the meaning of “law” in Sacred Scripture. There is no other way to think of the practice of denigrating God-given moral principles as though it is on the same level of “rules” given to children other than its being rather shallow. “If you don’t do your homework, no ice cream for desert,” is not the same as a natural-law Catholic principle that says if you regard God’s weakest and most afflicted lives as sub-human and subject to having their lives terminated, you are committing an objective grave evil.

Dear Editor: Thank you, Bishop DiMarzio, for your intelligent and heartfelt writings in support of the immigrants of the diocese.

Dear Editor: In Up Front & Personal (Dec. 3) Rita Piro writes: “We rationalize that after so many Christmases there couldn’t possibly be anything they (seniors) could or would want.”

Dear Editor: Just a few comments on recent criticisms of Donald Trump.
Hatred/fear? Just a subjective opinion. Racism/xenophobia? Because the president- elect wants to seal our borders and enforce existing immigration laws, some people call him a racist and anti-Muslim. Really? The McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act (1952) empowers the president to suspend admission or impose restrictions on any group deemed to be detrimental to the interest of the United States.