LETTERS

LETTERS
June 2006

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YOU HAVE ZERO AUTHORITY

Please, please stop sending your newspaper to my address. I am not a catholic, never have been, and never will be. I have zero interest in the your organization or any organization affiliated with the catholic (multinational corporation) church. As far as I am concerned, your organization and those like yours have zero authority on the teachings of Christ and nothing to offer whatsoever on the human condition. In the April issue, you ask the question, is it ethical for a homosexual to be a Catholic? My question for you is, what would Christ say? what would Christ do? Shame on you and this organization.

Al Carlson
San Francisco

Editor replies: Mr. Carlson should read more carefully. We did not ask the question whether it is ethical for a homosexual to be a Catholic but covered a conference which addressed that question. This was indicated in the headline: "Of Queers and Green Cheese: USF Conference Asks, Is it Ethical for Homosexuals to be Catholic?" If Mr. Carlson wants to know my answer to that question, it would be this: certainly it is ethical for homosexuals to be Catholic, just as it is ethical for any sinner to be Catholic. In fact, it is not only ethical, but necessary, if the homosexual is to overcome his homosexuality and the sinner his sin. Without God's grace, mediated through the sacraments, we can do nothing.

GO AWAY!

This is my second request. Remove me from your mailing list immediately. If I receive another "newsletter" filled with your misogynist diatribes, I will consider it harassment.

I do not agree with your views, your beliefs, or your intended infringements on the lives of American citizens rights guaranteed under the US Constitution. Your views need to stay in the church and OUT of secular life.

Name withheld by editor
San Francisco

STILL A LOST CAUSE

Last May, you published a letter from me, expressing my desire to have nothing to do with the Catholic Church (or your publication, which I'd mysteriously begun receiving) until the Vatican could find the fortitude to leave the Dark Ages and endorse the use of condoms in AIDS-stricken Africa. At that time, you stated, "the Church thinks that contraception is a positive wrong; should she then endorse it because it might have some good effects?"

Apparently, I'm not the only person who thinks the answer is yes. Here's a quote from an AP report filed just today (May 3, 2006): "the issue was reignited last week when a one-time papal contender, retired Milan Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, said in comments published in Italian newsweekly L'Espresso that condoms were the 'lesser evil' in combating the spread of AIDS. Other cardinals and prelates have made similar comments, arguing that when confronted with the possibility that within a married couple, an HIV-positive spouse could transmit the virus to the other, it was a 'lesser evil' to condone the couple's use of condoms.

The report goes on to say that "other cardinals, however, have flatly rejected their argument -- an indication that the issue is still undecided at the Vatican." So, while you may have thought my arguments were merely 'a list of one-liners gleaned from bumper stickers,' the cardinals and prelates apparently feel the topic is worthy of reasoned debate. Maybe there's hope for the Catholic Church after all. Your publication, sadly, remains a lost cause.

Laura Cavaluzzo
received via e-mail

Editor replies: I stand by what I wrote in my reply to Miss (Mrs.) Cavaluzzo last year, especially since she appears to rely on such sources as Associated Press for insight into the nature of the Catholic Church and Catholic teaching. First, Mrs. (Miss) Cavaluzzo should understand that there is no Catholic teaching condoning a morally evil act just because it is not as bad as some other possible act. That one may never commit an immoral act even for a good end has always been a hallmark of Catholic moral theology. To justify the use of condoms to halt the spread of a disease, one would first have to argue that, somehow, their use in that situation does not constitute contraception; that the use of the condom is essentially a disease prevention act and the contraceptive effect is only incidental. One cannot argue that committing the sin of contraception is permissible in circumstances where one is doing it to avoid some greater evil any more than one can justify sacrificing one innocent life to preserve many others. One may not do evil to avoid evil.

Miss (Mrs.) Cavaluzzo should also understand that disagreements among cardinals do not indicate that an "issue is still undecided at the Vatican." Catholic doctrine does not result from a consensus among the cardinals. Cardinals have in the past publicly dissented from Church teaching and discipline -- nothing new, here, no great surprise, especially when the cardinal in question is His Eminence of Milan. The red cassock is a mark of office, not necessarily of holiness -- or, even, of intelligence.

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