This is about the Aug. 9 Watertown Daily Times article about Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the highest U.S. bishop, inviting President Obama and Mitt Romney to a dinner and saying that he was willing to share at least one night of joking and camaraderie with the Democratic president despite their differences. No doubt that this meeting will evolve to a more jovial nature to seek an exemption for the Catholic Church from requiring all private care plans to cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. Bishop Terry R. LaValley, head of the Diocese of Ogdensburg, along with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, opposes the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services mandate.

The thrust of Cardinal Dolan’s meeting tends to suggest that all the bishops, archbishops and cardinals have circled their wagons and formulated a different agenda from the hard-line position but to a more subtle approach to gain exemption from the proposed law.

President Obama and Mitt Romney need to be vigilant and not be mesmerized by the cardinal’s charming persona. In my life experience I have found that one man’s saint may be another man’s Satan. I would also pass on a word of wisdom that I have learned, many decades ago, from my former line foreman William G. LaRose (now deceased) at New York Telephone Co., Watertown, “Beware of a person that smiles all the time.”

John H. Drewes

Copenhagen

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