Philanthropy or Misguided Piousness?

To the Editor:

Your article on Thomas S. Monaghan begs the question of whether Mr. Monaghan’s millions will support domestic terrorism (“Delivering on His Word,” October 7). His anti-abortion fervor, financed through the Thomas More Center for Law and Justice, has motivated him to take on the appeal of anti-abortion “activists” found guilty of targeting physicians and health-care workers who provide essential reproductive-health services to women.

This virulent strain of the anti-abortion movement believes it is permissible to place the lives of courageous women and men at risk in order to overturn Roe v. Wade, a goal anti-abortion “activists” have been unable to achieve through the courts. These individuals are actually part of the scourge of domestic terrorism that been visited upon us by the practitioners of hate.

Let us hope that Mr. Monaghan’s Christian beliefs do not extend to the protection of domestic terrorists.

Alexander C. Sanger
President
Planned Parenthood of New York City
New York

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To the Editor:

Thomas S. Monaghan says that giving to social causes like poverty elimination are “very good things,” but not as important as helping people get to heaven or stopping women from having control over their bodies and, therefore, their lives.

It is just this kind of typically misguided Catholic piousness, social prejudice, general ignorance, and wholly out-of-touch judgments that divides America and eventually undermines all that Mr. Monaghan holds as the absolute truth. Only when we step out of our black-and-white blinders — and get dirty in all the gray in between that is our social fabric — will we as fund raisers, charity workers, and philanthropists ever make a shred of difference.

Tolerance, compassion, and loving understanding was the banner of Jesus. Let me remind your Christian readers that Jesus spent his time with prostitutes, lepers, the socially disenfranchised, and the forgotten — the poorest of the poor. A truly Christian prospective on giving would follow his humble and inspirational example — without strings and judgments.

Christine A. Wolf
Peace Corps Fellow
Illinois State University
Normal, Ill.