Open Letter to George W. Bush
Dear President-elect Bush:
Congratulations! I am grateful to both you and Vice President Al Gore for your gracious
words of patriotism, reconciliation and healing for our great land. I know I speak for
many of my fellow Catholics and other Christians when I say we are happy and relieved that
you won.
You asked us to continue to pray not only for you, your family and our country but also
for Gore and his family. We will.
For Catholics, there is something very special that we can't overlook in how things worked
out. Dec. 12, the day the Supreme Court put an end to the wrangling in Florida, also
happens to be the Catholic Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, commemorating the miraculous
appearance of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, to a Mexican peasant, Juan Diego, in 1531, which
within 10 years led to the conversion of 9 million indigenous peoples to Christianity,
who, until then, were involved in human sacrifice.
In an image left on Juan Diego's cloak as a sign to the local bishop, Mary is pictured
with dark skin, Mexican features and pregnant. Today she is honored as the Patroness of
the Americas and of the Unborn. Throughout history Catholics have prayed the Rosary in
times of national crisis; millions prayed for you and the outcome of this election. We
believe our nation is in crisis, and the outcome of the election on this feast is no
coincidence.
You are a uniter, and in recent weeks we've seen how deeply divided our country is. When
the Supreme Court decided in 1973 that it was legal to take the life of an unborn child,
the great ideological split in our nation emerged and great numbers split off from
objective morality into a nowhere land of moral relativism. The gap has widened to this
climax in the recent election.
Pope John Paul II has written, 'This is the sinister result of relativism which remains
unopposed: the 'right' ceases to be such, because it is no longer founded on the
inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the stronger part. In this way a
democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of
totalitarianism.' (Evangelium Vitae, No. 20.)
This is the crisis that many Catholics and others have been praying about and working
against.
You have an uphill battle, but the tide is turning and hearts are changing. Bill Clinton
did great harm early in his presidency when by executive order he overturned so many of
the safeguards for the unborn put in place by your father and by President Reagan. Those
of us of a certain age were taught that freedom was God's greatest gift to America, and we
learned it is kept because brave people sacrificed their lives to keep it for us. Abortion
and other indignities against life are un-American because they demand the sacrifice of
'inconvenient' life for a false freedom. That's not the American way. If we continue, we
will lose our freedom.
Mr. President-elect, we thank God for you. If you get a chance on Jan. 22, stop by the
Mall in Washington for the March for Life and greet your most fervent constituency.
God bless you and God bless America.
Your fellow American, John
John Mallon is contributing editor for Inside
the Vatican magazine and a member of The Daily Oklahoman's Opinion Board of
Contributors. This article originally appeared in The Daily Oklahoman
on 12/15/2000 and is reprinted with permission. Send an e-mail to John Mallon
