Dear Editor: As a woman, having heard and seen how the U.S. president-elect considers and treats women (the most outrageous of his comments from a while ago as reported by CNN), I’d like to ask our religious leaders whether a Mass could be celebrated in all our dioceses in reparation for such demeaning words. They offend both women and men if for no other reason because also men are born from their mothers.
As an educator, how will we teach our young (and not so young) men to respect women? If you can reach the highest position of political power despite disrespecting women, why shouldn’t our young men do the same? And who will help our young (and not so young) women build and maintain their self-esteem? The Stockholm syndrome came to my mind when I heard some women, who support our president-elect, interviewed on TV saying that they were not paying attention to such disrespect.
As a Christian, I hope so much that the desire for more jobs, for more financial security, etc. did not cloud the mind of many of my brothers and sisters who preferred to forget that, while we certainly have to have something to put on the table to eat and a roof over our head, we cannot serve at the same time God and Mammon. We were cautioned by Jesus himself (Lk 16:13): “No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.”
As for the abortion issue, I am always very puzzled by the fact that so much emphasis is put on this sin, while much less importance is given to the death penalty which, as we read on amnestyusa.org, is also racially biased. “Since 1977, the overwhelming majority of death row defendants (77%) have been executed for killing white victims, even though African-Americans make up about half of all homicide victims.” Here, we need to ask God for forgiveness not only for the sin of killing people but also for the sin of racism: a compounded sin.
As a forgiving Christian citizen, I wish this electoral victory to be a moment of “spiritual awakening” for Donald Trump that he might discover he is just one of the billions of children of God for whose well-being he together with others will have to give an account, one day.
GABRIELLA RAHOY
Jamaica
