Cardinal Mahony

At this time of joy and celebration in the archdiocesan family of the faithful, it is disheartening to read that a small group of dissenters would seek to disrupt, for their own ends, the sacred liturgy at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral following the return of Cardinal Mahony from Rome (July 8). This intrusion by a handful of persons, who wore T-shirts bearing the words “Catholics for Free Choice,” was motivated by a misguided understanding of human rights.

The basis for the concept of human rights in the Western world is the Christian teaching of the sanctity of human life, all human life: citizen or alien, one ethnic group or another, healthy or ill, born or unborn, wanted or unwanted.

Cardinal Mahony is strongly pro-life. To infer otherwise is unfair. God willing, all Catholic pro-abortionists (an oxymoron) will have a change of heart and use their talents of advocacy in union with Christ, not in opposition to his teachings.

SISTER FRANCIS MARY, M.M.C., Good Shepherd Convent, Beverly Hills