Letters to the Editor, By Jack O'Neil, Sewickley

PSO and Pope: When 2+2=5

Friday, September 12, 2003

After reading the garbage-laden letter from Grove City's Walter Carson about the PSO and the Pope (“PSO, say no to the Pope,” Feedback, Sept. 5), I pondered just what would constitute an appropriate reply. Carson presents such moronic vituperation and egregious insults I knew I could not reply in kind as I consider myself a member of the human race and a person fairly tolerant of other people's views.

My policy was sorely tested when I read this diatribe against the Holy Father, John Paul II, the Catholic Church and the church hierarchy. I had to stop and remember that I spent some time in the South Pacific in WWII to help insure that such lunatic ravings were assured publication in a free press.

How to reply to such outrage and provocation? Thank heaven I remembered my old philosophy professor, Father Schenning at Duquesne University back in the 1950s. He taught ethics, logic, theology, cosmology, etc. And he cautioned that we would someday run across the Carsons in this otherwise civilized world.

He said that we might meet a person who claimed that two plus two equals five, and that we could take him to court and bring evidence and witnesses including Albert Einstein, to prove that two plus two equals four. While the jury and the judge would agree with us unanimously, Carson would be out in the corridor after the verdict, screaming “Two plus two equals five!”

Father Schenning's advice: “When one argues with a fool, there are two fools arguing.”

I congratulate Grove City for tolerating such fools in their midst.

JACK O'NEIL
Sewickley

Called 'em as he saw 'em

July 27, 1998

Helen Weals' July 14 letter "St. Paul Is No Marriage Expert'' reminds me of my college days at Duquesne University many years ago.

A philosophy minor, I had to take a course called "The Nature of Marriage,'' which just happened to be taught by a Father Koren, a goateed member of the Holy Ghost Fathers and a renowned philosophy professor. Inevitably, someone in the class finally asked Fr. Koren the obvious question: How could a Catholic priest presume to know anything about marriage when he was by profession a celibate?

To which Fr. Koren stroked his goatee and said, in his thick Dutch accent, "I never laid an egg, but I know a bad one when I see it.''

Case closed.

JACK O'NEIL
Sewickley

Bring back news values

August 6, 1997

The news media's criteria for what is “newsworthy” continues to fascinate this 1951 journalism graduate of Duquesne University.

Back then, we had five W's and an H - who, what, when, where, why and how. And of course, it was a sin to even hint at an editorial comment in a news story. Accuracy, truth and objectivity were tantamount. My, how times have changed. When an athletic ingrate visits Ireland and complains the people are rude and the food is terrible, the media report it as though it were a documented eyewitness account of the finding of the true cross.

Over several days around the Promise Keepers rally at Three Rivers Stadium, I swear I heard less about the rally and its noble intentions than I did about the hysterical feminists who “denounced” the event as a threat to women's freedom.

And, of course, there were endless references to the paranoia which insisted that Promise Keepers was some sort of political Trojan horse that was about to unleash an apocalypse on the innocent non-Christians who supposedly feared for their lives.

All of this reminded me of past times when, if any form of pro-life news event occurred, some reporter was sure to visit a nearby abortion clinic to interview someone who insisted that killing babies in their mother's womb was as American as apple pie.

Those who disagreed were dismissed as right-wing religious fanatics.

JACK O'NEIL
Sewickley

Epigraphs

Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name   ought never be drawn into public controversy.

 

--Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1946, Tradition #10

Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit is a Catholic University, founded by   members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, the Spiritans, and sustained   through a partnership of laity and religious. Duquesne serves God by serving   students—through commitment to excellence in liberal and professional   education, through profound concern for moral and spiritual values, through   the maintenance of an ecumenical atmosphere open to diversity, and through service   to the Church, the community, the nation and the world.

 

--Duquesne University Mission Statement

Boys, if you don't stick together, how do you expect me to follow you-ah?

 

--Lawrence Welk

What's this all about?

January 28, 2005 Friday
Our father, Jack O'Neil, passed away last night at his home.
Rest in peace.

Original site statement below:

* This site is done by Daniel X. O'Neil and Kevin J. O'Neil
* Jack O'Neil is our father
* He lives in Sewickley, outside of Pittsburgh, PA
* He is opinionated
* He has written Letters to the Editor of both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the (now-defunct) Pittsburgh Press
* We haven't lived there in a long time, so we've not consumed them in the course of the daily news
* We got all of these Letters to the Editor to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from their website after another brother had discovered them
* We are serializing them here
* We disagree with a goodly amount of this printed matter
* That's not really important
* Text is really all that counts
* This site is really just a series of seconds takes on original texts
* Here's two more examples of the same sort of thing: GoogObits and GoogOgraphy
* All of which are a part of a larger concept known as the Derivative Works Movement. More on that here
* We invite your comments