Good Reads About Vietnam
Dear Editor: Cecilia Cicone’s very favorable review (“‘The Women’: Novel Where Vocation and the Cross Overlap,” April 6) of Kristin Hannah’s latest number 1 best-seller “The Women” is right on target.
Having read a couple of Hannah’s earlier historical novels, “The Nightingale” and “The Four Winds,’’ I thoroughly enjoyed her story of a nurse who served in Vietnam in the 1960s and the aftermath of returning home to the U.S. I suggest that readers may also enjoy another historical novel by a fine Catholic author, Alice McDermott, “Absolution,” that deals with the same time period of the Vietnam War.
Published by McDermott a year prior to Hannah’s work, it adds a very welcome Catholic spin to the story. Having lived through those turbulent years as a teenager and young adult, I truly appreciated both authors’ many references to the events that influenced our American lives.
There is much to learn from good historical fiction that reflects and shapes our lives.
Msgr. Steven Ferrari
Southbury, CT
Praise for Mothers
Dear Editor: Sunday, May 12, is the day we honor our mothers both living and deceased, far and near on Mother’s Day. As I was reading on the internet, a woman named Anna Jarvis campaigned in 1905 for a day dedicated to mothers, living and deceased.
She succeeded, and on May 8, 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed it into law and made the second Sunday in May Mother’s Day. I remembered my mother Teressa Bedell, who I had for a short time.
She passed away on Sept. 17, 1963, when I was 14 years old. She was dedicated to me and our entire family, and worked tirelessly with her works of charity in the community. I was a sickly child and had educational problems and stuttered. She helped me with all these issues, with the help from others. I learned a lot from her love toward me.
Frederick Robert Bedell Jr.
Bellerose
Responding to Patricia Allaire
Dear Editor: In response to Patricia Allaire (Letters, “Imposing Our Will,” April 20), we do have a grave responsibility to do all we can to enact laws to protect life.
I want to add that a woman should give her own life to protect her unborn baby’s life.
Wanda Lucci
Bath Beach
Another Allaire Response
Dear Editor: Patricia Allaire got the first part of her letter correct. However, in knowing that our Church was established by Our Lord to carry out His mission of evangelizing the world, I believe it is our right, nay, obligation to teach the truth in any way that is possible.
The truth in this case is that life begins at conception. So in working to change our city, state, and national laws, we reflect what God wants His Church to give to the world:
the light of truth!
Fred D. Trabulsi
Bay Ridge
One More Response
Dear Editor: A letter suggested that we have no right to impose our Catholic prolife beliefs on others. Let’s honestly state the fact that abortion is the murder of an innocent
human person. Such people have no choice and others have denied their natural right to life provided in America’s founding documents. People need to hear this.
Yes, Catholic teaching is “pro-life,” but common sense and our humanity should uphold such a belief regardless of faith. If not, where does the “right” to murder innocents end? For example, does it include the “right” to murder a third trimester baby of an unwanted gender?
Who decides?
Patricia Gregorek
Greenpoint
Recent Tablet Editorials
Dear Editor: Recent Tablet editorials appear to be pushing readers toward voting for the Republican candidate for president. Cardinal Wilton Gregory calls President Biden a “cafeteria Catholic,” and yet in the
State of the Union speech this president underscored the Church’s social justice stance: raising taxes on wealthy corporations and individuals in order to lower the deficit and protect Social Security, Medicare, and other parts of the social safety net; investing in American infrastructure; providing jobs and training; passing the border bill that’s stalled in the House; enhancing the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care), and lowering the cost of prescription drugs.
The speech was filled with proposals to benefit the middle class and, by extension, all people. Once again in their once-every-fouryear voting guide, the American bishops have made abortion the deciding issue, even though Pope Francis has said it is not preeminent but must be considered in light of other issues.
So, who’s being a cafeteria Catholic now?
Barbara McGillicuddy Bolton
Park Slope
