To the editor:

When the Rev. Jerry Falwell passed on to his reward a few days ago, America lost the greatest (purely) religious leader since the death of Martin Luther King Jr. While King concentrated his efforts in making America listen to its better angels with respect to race, Falwell sallied forth on behalf of the unborn, our largest group of disenfranchised innocents.

There is (and always shall be) a direct and coherent line running from the civil rights movement in America to the crusade to save unborn children from the very successful death merchants who have targeted them for extermination – from Bull Connor to Planned Parenthood, if you will.

Falwell, who bridged the divide between Roman Catholics and Baptists, was representative of the then new political realignment that brought Ronald Wilson Reagan to the presidency and ushered in an era of ascendant conservatism. Falwell also had a pronounced animus for those anti-Semites among us who sought to usher in another Holocaust. He was forthright in his support for the nation-state of Israel and became instrumental in making this one of the litmus tests for human decency in American politics.

Lastly, in an era when religious leaders (particularly those from my own Roman Catholic Church) have largely abandoned Christianity’s traditional moorings, Falwell stood tall as a man of integrity in an age of betrayal and sloth.

Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II now have company in heaven. God bless them all – the trio triumphant.

Matthew M. O’Connell,

Lawrence