Unlike Fr. McBrien, saints pursued truth

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To the Editor:

Steve Lynn’s Feb. 16 letter disdains the corn-bred intellect that berates Father (Richard) McBrien. Would that include the little-educated peasant saints, Joan of Arc, Bernadette and John Vianney? This “corn-bred intellect” notes that Oxford and Cambridge professor C.S. Lewis revered the art school dropout, G.K. Chesterton.
In contrast to Fr. McBrien, the learned Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More and John Paul II lived bravely, pursued truth, and loved their Lord and their neighbor passionately and humbly.
When Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon refused the Laetare award from the University of Notre Dame in 2009, Fr. McBrien ignored her great act of integrity. She refused to cooperate in neutralizing the protest against the university giving an award to President Barack Obama.
Today, Glendon and another law professor, Helen Alvare, and more than 4,500 women are writing and signing in protest of the Jan. 20 HHS “healthcare” mandate which tramples on the First Amendment rights of ALL Americans.
Sister Renee Mirkes, PhD, of the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha, tells me that contraceptive use is a common response to reproductive problems. In contrast, the institute diagnoses and often treats core problems successfully by OTHER methods. Chemical contraceptives are also too often used to interfere with a normal healthy function. The 2012 Physicians’ Desk Ref­erence lists many potentially serious side effects. How is that health care?
Like the prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles, today we laity and our bishops may be a minority, but the truth has seldom been popular. As Chesterton said, “Christ­ianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found hard, and not tried.”
Mary Rourke
Davenport


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