NEWS STORY: Catholic editor stunned by reaction to controversial abortion editorial

c. 1998 Religion News Service VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ The editor of Roman Catholic archdiocese of Vancouver’s newspaper says he felt like he was hit by a truck when he ignited a continent-wide furor over an editorial in which he admitted part of him was”pleased”about the murder of a New York doctor who performs abortions. […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ The editor of Roman Catholic archdiocese of Vancouver’s newspaper says he felt like he was hit by a truck when he ignited a continent-wide furor over an editorial in which he admitted part of him was”pleased”about the murder of a New York doctor who performs abortions.

Paul Schratz _ expressing shock that media outlets from across North America covered his contentious November editorial _ said he should have been more”judicious”when he admitted to”mixed feelings”about the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian of Buffalo.”I wrote what was intended to be an unwavering condemnation of the use of violence, but chose words that could be used to suggest the opposite,”Schratz said in a follow-up editorial in the December edition of The B.C. Catholic, the official newspaper of the province’s 600,000 Roman Catholics.


After The Vancouver Sun broke the story, Schratz said he was inundated with journalists calling from syndicated TV and radio talk shows in the United States, U.S. newspapers, and international wire services as well as Canadian talk shows, national newspapers and national TV news programs.

The two most controversial paragraphs in Schratz’s original editorial, which ran on the heels of the slaying of Slepian, read:”Talk about mixed feelings. How can anyone help but be pleased that murders of abortionists just might have some positive side effects. Fewer doctors are willing to face the stigma, and now the threat of personal harm, associated with performing abortions.”It just goes to show that our all-powerful and all-loving God can bring good from any evil situation. If there’s a positive outcome from immorality, that’s the Lord’s handiwork. It would be wrong not to notice it.” In his latest editorial, Schratz said he never intended those remarks to be seized in isolation.”I thought that the surrounding paragraphs were plain enough: That achieving what you’re hoping for through evil means is never justified.” Schratz said Vancouver Archbishop Adam Exner, considered one of the more conservative bishops in Canada, which has 13 million nominal Catholics, did not see his original editorial before it went into print, even though Exner is publisher of the newspaper.

Exner said he felt Schratz’s editorial was not well-worded but basically correct.

Schratz, who was an editorial writer for Vancouver’s secular Province daily newspaper until last year, takes a multi-edged approach to the media blitz he provoked.

He begins his latest editorial by saying he is going to follow the lead of Pope John Paul II, whom he says is showing the world how to repent.

But after saying he wouldn’t write such an editorial again, Schratz says maybe some good came from the”enormous audience the controversy reached,”while suggesting some media outlets purposely misinterpreted his editorial out of a desire to make sure”discord was deliberately sown to mute one more voice decrying the culture of death.” Reactions to the second editorial have been guarded.”It’s nice that he’s backtracked from his first editorial, although maybe not as wholeheartedly as I’d like to see,”said Joyce Arthurs, spokeswoman for Canada’s Pro-Choice Action Network.

Supporters of legal abortion, Arthurs said, strongly condemned Schratz’s first editorial because they were feeling”very brutalized and vulnerable”after the murder of Slepian.

Slepian’s murder has been linked to four other sniper attacks on doctors who perform abortions.


Arthurs said she found Schratz’s initial editorial”two-faced,”contradictory and offensive. Any message against violence that Schratz might have tried to convey, she said, was negated by the two paragraphs in which he admitted feeling pleased by the side-effects of doctors who perform abortions.

DEA END TODD

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