Catholic enrollment declines due to cost, not prayer ban Re: “Supreme Court ended praying in public school,” From Readers, May 20
As he has been so many times in the past, Edd Doerr is wrong again. His assertion that the Supreme Court ruling that teacher-led prayer in public schools was unconstitutional caused the enrollment decline in Catholic schools is nonsense.
Lacking public support and the decline in religious vocations, Catholic schools have become very expensive — and unaffordable for many. When fully staffed by nuns and priests who were basically volunteers, Catholic schools were very affordable. Why else would religious people choose to send their children to amoral public schools in lieu of a good Catholic education?
Mr. Doerr makes this wild assertion because it fits his agenda, which is to deny religious schools any public support despite the good they do for society: graduating better educated, fundamentally moral, disciplined, law-abiding citizens at little or no cost to taxpayers.
William Luksic
Rockville
Higher taxes, fees after ‘cutting’ the budget
Re: “MontCo school officials resist new budget,” May 19
Examiner reporter
Brian Hughes exposes the contradiction of Montgomery County’s fiscal situation: a 2.2 percent increase in total spending while our elected officials claim to have “cut” the budget. Anything cut was simply appended to another area, with the result being an increase in what the county does and, subsequently, what it has to pay for.
Couple Montgomery County’s “never say no” philosophy to a progressive Maryland state legislature and an ultraliberal governor, and join that lash-up with a more intrusive, centralized and authoritarian federal government, and you have a perfect storm of pain for the citizen.
How much pain will our citizens tolerate? Montgomery County’s leaders are betting on a little more.
Kurt S. Osuch
Chevy Chase
Obama ignores last six decades of history
Re: “Obama: Israel must abandon occupied land,” May 19
President Obama uses the pejorative term “occupied land” inaccurately when he refers to Judea and Samaria (otherwise called the West Bank). After successive attempts by Arab armies to destroy Israel, both U.N. Resolutions 242 and 336, which were designed to bring an end to the conflict by negotiation, specifically allowed Israel to retain defensible borders — as compared to the temporary armistice lines prior to 1967.
Instead of rapid negotiations with Israel for a final peace, neither Jordan nor the Palestine Liberation Organization, its claims successor in 1988, were willing to make peace during that time, insisting on the dismantling of the Jewish state. In the absence of any negotiations, Israel set its own defensible borders.
Obama ignored the events of the last 63 years when he called for a return to the 1949 borders of Israel, which would be accompanied by the expulsion of 500,000 Israelis from their homes. This is not equal to the million Arab Jews driven out of Arab lands after the 1948 war, but it is obviously not a possibility to be tolerated by a sovereign nation.
Nelson Marans
Silver Spring
