Fwd: Boston Globe Interprets the Papacy for Us...!

We had a call at the office from one of our hawk-eyed 90-plus-year-olds alerting us to an outrageous depiction of the culture of death in the Boston Globe today.  James Carroll is obviously not familiar with the world of pro-life thought... James Carroll's "An opening in Rome?" (June 3), where he makes positive observations about Pope Francis, commits a most peculiar non-sequitur, "Francis's immediate predecessors regularly derided what they called the 'culture of death' in speaking of those outside the faith." Massachusetts Citizens for Life is nonsectarian but we appreciate the role of Papal leadership in preaching the dignity of all life including unborn babies, people with disabilities or terminal illness, and those who are elderly – whatever faith they have or do not have. Blessed John Paul II first referenced the "Culture of Life," to describe this dignity and its opposite, the "Culture of Death" at World Youth Day in 1993.  The Pope returned to the theme in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life) in which he described the Culture of Death, A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favored tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. None of his statements or those of other leaders who have used the term "Culture of Death" in any way derides people "outside the faith."  The column implies that Mr. Carroll had little use for Francis's immediate predecessors, but that should not allow misrepresentation of their teaching. Anne Fox, President, Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Charlestown