To the Editor:
As we left a funeral the other day, I asked my uncle, a Catholic priest, what the bishops were doing about this election. I asked because I used to argue with my father about his votes for president.
“The bishops tell me my soul is in danger if I vote for a Democrat who supports abortion,” my father would say. “So it’s O.K. to vote for someone who believes in the death penalty but not abortion?” was my retort. The last Democrat he got to vote against was Bill Clinton. And my dad was a Democrat.
My uncle the priest told me that the bishops still believe that abortion is the gravest sin (he disagrees), but that this year they were telling their flocks to listen to their consciences.
Either these old men have finally seen a Republican too vile and repugnant to endorse, or the Nuns on the Bus have really won the hearts and minds of American Catholics.
ROBERT LAUGHLIN
Denver
Note from KBJ: You have to be preternaturally stupid to think that it is inconsistent to be opposed to abortion but in favor of capital punishment. Fetuses are innocent; convicted murderers are not.
