I received an email from the editor of the Georgia Bulletin this afternoon, in response to my letter to the editor posted here Thursday evening.  Here’s an excerpt:

Thanks for your letter and comments. I will send it on to the Archbishop’s office. I appreciate your taking the time to let me know your thoughts on this subject.

You have probably already seen this, but Archbishop Gregory did publish a statement on the archdiocesan Web site regarding the election:

www.archatl.com/archbishops/gregory/writings/2008/11-05-08-e lection.htm

I hope that these statements address your concerns and wish you all the best.

The comments referenced at the link mentioned, in part, say

Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory joins the U.S. bishops in congratulating President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden. “I offer my prayerful good wishes on this historic occasion. The election of the first African-American President of the United States shows the degree of maturity reached by Americans and, I hope, is a definitive sign of reconciliation,” said Archbishop Gregory.

On the important issues facing the United States after the election, Archbishop Gregory stated, “The Catholic Church will continue to challenge and urge the country’s leaders to enact laws that respect human life at each stage of its existence.

I responded to the editor,

His Grace’s comments regarding the election do not come near addressing the comments attributed to him in the Times article on Thursday; a quick look at the Catholic blogosphere following the release of the article (and its subsequent headline on the Drudge Report) have led many Catholics – deep-thinking, well-Catechized Catholics, both lay and clergy, to be quite confused, and more importantly concerned with the way they appeared in the secular media, which as I said seems almost dedicated to the purpose of taking clergy’s comments out of context.

I sent a copy of my letter to His Grace myself, but I do appreciate your doing likewise – I sent it to out of a desire to submit it to your editorial board for possible publishing; I know space is limited and topicality may be as well; I wrote the letter at the urging of many Catholic bloggers and blog readers, because I believe quite strongly that we need a public clarification of the comments attributed to our shepherd.  A simple look at Google shows how big of a story this became, and quite quickly as well – a search of the terms “archbishop gregory obama” for example yields tons of results, and in fact my own blog post on the subject is fourth on the list of results.  After this story broke on Thursday morning, traffic to my post experienced a spike.  I say this not to inflate my ego, but to simply point out that this is something a lot of people are looking in to, to try and discern what the meaning of it is; I think the best case scenario would be a very public clarification from His Grace so that when someone looks for information on this subject, they find that public clarification and are able to put the issue to rest.

And we shall see what happens next.