Dear Editor: In a recent edition, there were several clarion calls for action in defense of our Catholic and faith-based teachings of the Gospel of Christ in the contemporary secular humanist war against our Church teachings and God’s Commandments as the foundation of our world’s moral and ethical value system and code. These were topped off by The Tablet’s page-one headline “Solution for Conscience Clause” (April 30), the basis of which is a government mandated insult to all men and women of good faith and a denial of their First Amendment rights.

To my knowledge, such calls have echoed back to the early 1960s and probably, even back to very beginnings of our Church.

Sadly, these calls have usually been answered with a deafening silence, even by too many seriously practicing Catholics. The apathetic head in the sand, “let the other guy do it” syndrome has diluted the courage and conviction of too many.

The main culprit in this noxious response can be traced to two well-spread social viruses, probably very subtly infused into the American psyche in the ’50s or ’60s by those who sought to manipulate and control the social and cultural mind-set and thought process of any who might speak up in defense of moral and ethical values then, and any orthodox or religious-based values and/or beliefs today.

The most effective and damaging mental-control potion was an insidious elixir called “PC,” or political correctness, which today dominates the majority of our social and civil decisions, thoughts and action planning.

The second, even more potent subjective poison is an inbred fear of being labeled as a religious zealot, crack-pot or do-gooder by our neighbors, friends, fellow workers and even parishioners.

Thus, today we live in a world where God has been allowed to be thrown under the bus of atheistic vitriol and secularist mandate or at best relegated to the back burner of all civil discussion and social public acceptance. As such, the true Catholic apologist has become an enigma or social anathema in public dialogue and/or the defense of our Church and moral teachings.

Far too many, for far too long, have been sucked into the PC booby-trap and have fallen prey to their own worst fears and as such, Satan and his disciples of darkness are winning the war for minds, hearts and souls in our new age, anti-God world.

In the recent Easter season, one might wonder, what we would have been celebrating if the “human essence” of Jesus had given into the PC mantra and call. Our single most powerful and potent weapons and armor against the PC culture are the frequent reception of the Eucharist and the daily Rosary. Satan and his PC army have no hope or defense against Jesus and Mary when they are actively involved in our lives, thoughts and actions.

Go for it! They are just waiting for us to call.

BOB FALLON

Dyker Heights