Following is a letter from Dr. James Likoudis, president emeritus of Catholics United for the Faith, writing to the Editor of the "Buffalo News" pointing out its deep and virulent anti-Catholic bias.

 

Dear Editor

It is most unfortunate that the "Buffalo News" exercises a monopoly of major news publishing in the Western New York Community. It is its influence in shaping public opinion with regard to religious and moral issues, however, that should deeply concern Catholics seeking to preserve values that support human dignity. In 1987 Pope John Paul II spoke to American Media concerning their role as a "force for great good or great evil".

"Communications can appeal to and promote what is debased in people: dehumanized sex through pornography or through a casual attitude toward sex and human life; greed through materialism and consumerism or irresponsible individualism; anger and vengefulness through violence or self-righteousness. All the media of popular culture... can build or destroy, uplift or cast down. You have untold possibilities for good, ominous possibilities for destruction. It is the difference between death and life – the death or life of the spirit. And it is a matter of choice.

The challenge of Moses to the people of Israel is applicable to all of us today : 'I set before you life and death ... Choose life' (Dt. 30:19)

Included in the responsibilities of the Press is the obligation to avoid manipulation of truth for any reason.This manipulation in fact takes place when certain issues are passed over in silence, in order that others may be unduly emphasized. It also occurs when information is altered or withheld so that society will be less able to resist the imposition of a given ideology."

For almost 3 decades the Buffalo News has made clear its liberal Welfare State ideology that favors the "Culture of Death" presently disgracing American life. Its pages have been full of articles and columns giving its secular Imprimatur to such practices as contraception, International Family Planning, abortion, sterilization, in vitro-fertilization, surrogate motherhood, homosexuality, euthanasia, and pornography. That all these are moral evils helping to destroy normal, healthy family life does not matter to the Editors of the Buffalo News who have long been the mouthpiece for Planned Parenthood, radical feminist groups, homosexual activists and advocates for School Sex Education and Population Control measures.

Catholics and other Christians have been exposed to the steady bombardment of such Editorials as the following:

• Make Roe vs. Wade the Guide for Federal Law on Choice
• Fortify Abortion Rights
• Congress Has Responsibility to Restore Abortion Rights
• Family Planning for All Who Want It
• Let Courts Decide Gay Rights
• Nude Dancing Gets Bum Rap: Court's Ruling Endangers Free Expression
• State Must Add More Funds for Family-Planning Services
• Get Rid of Military Ban on Gays
• Nancy Cruzan, Allowed To Die, Leaves Behind a Gift to All
• FDA should O.K. new Abortion Pill

Buffalo News Editorials and Columnists (such as Pat Swift) together with a steady diet of sexually-suggestive Advertising, have provided readers with a sickening view of an amoral Brave New World that is the antithesis of any Christian social order. The Buffalo News has been the ally and advocate of the Sexual Revolution rotting American society.

With respect to newspaper coverage of the serious events affecting the internal life and teaching of the Catholic Church, the Buffalo News has taken delight in highlighting the views of liberal dissenters from Catholic doctrine, discrediting as "hopeless conservatives" those seeking to uphold Magisterial teaching, and often censoring the Letters and views of those seeking to publicize the Church's positions. Priests and laity who have written those Letters have no doubt concerning the News' deep-seated anti-Catholicism. Fixed in their demagogic Liberalism, the News' Editors are instinctively aware that the Catholic Church is their ideological enemy. They have taken full advantage of the woeful failure of the Diocesan paper to counteract their influence and hold them accountable to the Catholic population who find their most cherished beliefs mocked, ridiculed as irrelevant, and contradicted.

The "Pro-Choice" Catholic politicians, physicians, lawyers, and teachers who disgrace the Western New York scene are the legacy of the Buffalo News' effective disregard of fundamental morality and relentless intimidation of a gullible public.

For the benefit of our readers, we publish some sample letters and a recent contribution to "Viewpoints" that never appeared in the Buffalo News.  UNPUBLISHED LETTERS TO THE BUFFALO NEWS

But what about the Catholic Press?

Generally everyone knows that the secular Press is notoriously anti-religious to begin with. However, when dealing with Catholic issues it often acquires a perversely ferocious and biased anti-Catholic character. So, one may ask, "What about the Catholic Press?"

Alas, it too has been a frequent purveyor of Dissent and Disobedience to Church authority as can be seen by perusal of such magazines as America, U.S. Catholic, St. Anthony's Messenger, Church, Commonweal, and the newspaper National Catholic Reporter. As a great Catholic columnist Paul Hallet wrote in 1978:

"The Catholic Press exists for the prime purpose of teaching Catholic truth as it has been handed down by the Magisterium. If it confuses this purpose by printing matter to the contrary, it has lost the purpose of its existence."

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