It’s hard to know where to start with the letter written by Bridget Geraghty in Monday’s paper. As an informed Catholic, I would like to clarify a few things:

God’s greatest commandment is not to love others. That’s number two. Number one is to love God, which we do by following his commandments.

Catholics who did not vote for Kerry because his standing on every major moral issue is in contradiction with the Church are not ignorant sheep. Despite what Geraghty thinks, being influenced by what we profess to be true is good, and we want our government to reflect truth and goodness.

If Geraghty did not want to vote for a man whose hands were bloody from signing death warrants, then perhaps she shouldn’t have voted, since Kerry has the blood of millions of babies on his hands. Abortion kills more than 4,000 Americans each day.

President Bush is not saying that homosexuals are less than citizens because they cannot marry each other. In this case, the president would also be saying that people with first cousins are less than citizens because first cousins cannot marry each other either.

I am requesting that readers of the DI please stop writing letters that start with “I am Catholic” and end with “I believe whatever I want, therefore Catholics don’t have to believe everything the Church teaches.” Catholicism at its roots is about living our faith in every arena of our lives, and preferring death to infidelity to the truth. The early Christian martyrs did not die so that we could mix and match the teachings of Christ.

Terese Bower

junior in LAS