To the Editor:
Everyone who has been listening to the unfolding details of the actual and intended violent behavior at our nation’s Capitol Jan. 6 must be shaken and frightened. It is very hard to believe this was happening in our country. As we wrap our heads around this event, we must also ask ourselves if there were voices in our Catholic Church who helped fuel such an event. Voices who insisted that a vote for the incoming president would send someone to hell; voices that painted one of the parties as “satanic.”
Those voices were on loud display in some quarters of the American church. (Thank you, Bishop Thomas Zinkula, for never leading our diocese down that path and for your thoughtful non-partisanship.) We have been horrified in the past by the radicalization of ISIS soldiers and their violence. Now it has come home to us, not from outside our country but from inside. Our sackcloth and ashes moment has arrived.
Mary Lu Callahan
Iowa City
