Editor's Desk: Double Exposure

By Michael F. Flach
Herald Editor
(From the issue of 3/13/03)

As expected, the two "double" issues we mailed out in February brought contrasting responses from those who don’t normally receive the HERALD. We received nearly 500 new subscriptions as of March 11, with more arriving every day.

Generally we had positive responses to our Feb. 20 article "A Call to Come Home." Maryellen Merchant, who directs the Come Home program for All Saints Parish in Manassas, said she received numerous inquiries about the program after the article was published.

"We are really happy to see that you are trying to get a Catholic paper to each family and we pray for the success of your efforts," wrote a reader from Woodbridge.

Others were quick to call the office and ask that their names be removed from our mailing list. We readily obliged. Still others took the time to catalogue exactly why they don’t want to receive the paper.

"I do not subscribe to the backward-looking, ultra right-wing mode of thinking, either in religion or politics," wrote a woman from Alexandria. "I found it most troubling your publication and some in the Catholic Church are in lockstep with the Republican Party, which is bent on ignoring the Constitutional prohibitions which set up the necessary wall between Church and State."

She went on to praise the openness of Pope John XXIII and the "highly knowledgeable" population living in the Arlington Diocese. "Only historians need to constantly look backward," she said. "This is not the Middle Ages where only priests were educated and the general population was illiterate. Perhaps only when the Catholic Church loses its tax-exempt status will it begin to be more realistic about its distasteful and illegal approach."

On the other side of the political spectrum, a reader from Oak Park, after reading the paper "from cover to cover," took exception with our article on Arlington resident Judith Kelly and her non-violent protest at the former School of the Americas in Georgia.

"The baseless anti-war sentiment which pervades the Catholic Church is, in actuality, an anti-peace effort today within the context of the U.S. and Iraq," he said. "The popular anti-war behavior fosters oppression. The Church is as naïve as it was during Hitler’s time when it failed oppressed people."

The Kelly article generated a completely different response from one young woman. "Thank you for Irene Lagan's story on Judith Kelly, the Arlington resident who risked a federal prison sentence for her political actions to close down the School of the Americas, a U.S. funded military school that has trained the likes of Manuel Noriega and the soldiers who murdered El Salvadoran Bishop Oscar Romero," she wrote.

"As a young 20-something, I am thirsting for authentic examples of how to live as a faith-filled and hopeful woman. Judith Kelly's story speaks to me as a reminder of the light we are all called to be and nourishes my desire to live a courageous life. Her actions remind me that we must be about building God's Kingdom here on earth through active and prayerful peacemaking.  I am grateful for her example and grateful to the Arlington Catholic Herald for sharing her story."

It must be a clever ploy on our part to be both a "right-wing" propaganda tool and a stereotypical "leftist" publication at the same time. We must be doing something right (or left).— M.F.F.

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