Letters to the Editor

Try to Be a Little Kinder

Dear Editor: The letter in the Readers’ Forum in last week’s issue of The Tablet from Stephen Lieber (“Name Calling Harms Dialog”) put into words my exact feelings about the need for respect for others’ sincere thoughts. Without respect we cannot have the “ongoing discussion,” a profitable, real forum, that the editor’s note says The Tablet is striving for.

I join Mr. Lieber in his request for The Tablet to encourage openness, honesty, thoughtfulness, kindness.

And this past week, every single published letter was written with that respect! Yes!

“Peter Pan” author J.M. Barrie said: “Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?”

ROSEMARY GREBIN PALMS
Prospect Heights

3 thoughts on “Try to Be a Little Kinder

  1. To ROSEMARY GREBIN PALMS,
    Thank you for your kind words. Yes, I encourage openness, honesty, thoughtfulness, kindness. I am ready to accept and to respect various views. The issue here is that Dwayne Ayers used the word “liberal” in a coded manner. He used the word in a disrespectful manner. I objected to code words being printed in the Tablet.

    To Charles Castello,
    What was viscous about my letter? I said “Name calling is used to isolate and suppress any ideas that are different from what the speaker deems acceptable.” I did not attack conservatives or pro-lifers. I criticized name calling.

    To the editors of the Tablet,
    You also misstated my letter. You replied that the Tablet attempts to print a variety of opinions. Then why print an abusive letter that uses a code phrase to attack those who have a different position? You idea of diversity and mine are very different. I believe in respecting those who have a different view. Listen, and learn from them. Do not attack them. Do not use code words to demean them.

    1. Yes you did attack conservatives and pro-lifers when you characterized them as “single issue.” How is this not a viciously insulting and shallow thing to do? And what is abusive about using words like liberal and progressive, which you yourself used to assert a positive association. Your objection is that there should be no negative connotation associated with these words. Well that would contradict your position of being open to a variety of opinions, including the one that the public position of the liberal political and social establishment, clearly reiterated, without exaggeration, millions of times, in academics, media, and entertainment, is pro-abortion. And this may come as a shock to you, but there are Catholics who recognize abortion as the crime against humanity that it is, even when there are pro-abortion bishops, who refuse to.