movement
JOHN O'KEEFFE's article of March 13 on the Focolare Movement seems to me to have missed the point.
From the outside, the "incessant emphasis on love and rather a lot of singing . . . is perhaps a hit gooey for these shores." True.
But the point of the movemen is unJerstood only when its impact has brought about a very personal commitment to God. One's life is suddenly changed from doing to being.
Then the "network of groups for constant mutual support" comes into play.
Then the "underrated pastime of loving God and one's neighbour" becomes a reality.
Then to want to "sing about the love of God" is natural— it becomes all one ever wants to sing about.
I can testify that "the ideal is to live the personal life so as to see Christ in every neighbour and not with the overt desire to convert anyone." I am in the Focolare Movement as a married Anglican.
Shirley R. Pugh (Mrs.) Liverpool.
Skill of aborting
wTH triumph and pride Mr. Crossman informs The nation of deaths through abortion reforms!
A thousand times twenty— to life little risk, Hence the Dachaus of London do business quite brisk.
Condemning King Herod, how wrong we have been, Who slaughtered some children while acting through spleen.
'Progressive and wise, with fame undistorted If two years before, he had had them aborted. How 'tragic this progress developed so late, For these wise reformers might have shared the same fate, As the unwanted foetus, they rashly condemn; Despising the Author of Life above them.
Did the mighty Creator show little 'perception In giving us humans the power of conception? If the skill of aborting in Adam there'd been This Planet might now be quite calm and serene!
James Drake Felbridge, Sussex.
Nina Petnovich
COULD any readers tell me if they have ever read about or heard of a Russian woman, Nina Petnovich, born in China in 1919? She became a nun in New Zealand about 1950 to fulfil a promise to the Blessed Virgin to do so if she and her family were allowed to leave China after the Cornmunist take-over and get to New Zealand.
Some time after she took her vows, her father—who had been a colonel in the White Russian army—her mother and her two brothers became Catholics.
Bernard Gowdy 64 Springhill Avenue, Springfield Road, Belfast, 12.