WCR Letters to the Editor

Article placement insensitive

The first issue is probably minor - but it caused me pause. On your second page you have printed two very different views of a responsible member of the living Church.

The first was a call for persons to consider the plight of the poor in Brazil - people who are working for less than $1 per day. Under that article is one of a woman who had carved butter into a resemblance of Our Lord - using and contaminating over 900 kg. of food in the process.

Does anyone else see how incredibly awful that waste is? Especially in light of the previous story.

To place those two stories right after each other was either brilliantly crafted guilt processing - or just insensitive.

The second issue, however, is of more importance. That is my concern with your front page glamorization of the individual who killed innocent children recently. This is a person of questionable emotional strength who sought personal credibility through an unbelievable act of violence.

He is clearly in need of intense psychiatric assistance - and to give him even the minor and limited attention of your front page only tells him (or others who also are of the same thinking) that acts of this nature will glean them the attention and public notoriety that they so desperately seek.

I am not speaking of the actual article - but rather the placement of the information (front page) and the use of the picture. The actual article is well written and factual - however to give individuals who are acting with malice to get attention - that same attention that caused the violence - only serves to increase their need to act out.

Dianne Moir
Pigeon Lake

Show more reverence for Christ's real presence

I will call it a certain complacency that has crept into our churches, in the form of indifference to the true presence of Jesus in the tabernacle. This is manifest in the lack of genuflections among the laity and even the acolytes, a lack of reverence before and after holy Mass in loudly visiting our neighbour in the main body of the church, and in other subtle ways which must delight Satan.

God is everywhere and he surely likes our company and to have us fellowship with one another. In the Catholic Church Jesus is truly and substantially present in the tabernacle, and we must be mindful that this is a place to come in reverence and even awe as we witness this greatest miracle of faith.

This is a house of prayer for all people. The red vigil light gives affirmation to the presence of Jesus, our king. How easily we sing "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is lord"

Let us remember to genuflect in the presence of Jesus in the tabernacle and give thanks for the great gift from him which brings us into his very presence. Please consider as well that we can visit after Mass outside the main body of the church, where many are still quietly visiting with the Lord.

God will surely be pleased with us as we fellowship in consideration and respect for his holy place of prayer.

Prepare well to receive the living body of Jesus in the Eucharist. God dispenses grace to you according to how you are prepared to receive him. Pray often and much and take every opportunity to receive graces of the sacrament of Reconciliation.

Bill Lavelle
Ardrossan

Catechism quote no longer applies

With regard to homosexuality, Day quotes from no. 2358 in the English version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that reads in part: "They do not choose their homosexual condition, for most of them it is a trial."

However, on Sept. 9, 1997 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, presented the official edition of the Catechism in Latin. This is the definitive Latin text to which all translations, including those already published, will now have to conform.

Many corrections have been made to the 1992 English version, and as regards homosexuality the second paragraph of no. 2358 as quoted above, has been changed to read: "This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial."

There is a world of difference here, in both meaning and consequences.

There is no credible scientific proof that homosexuality is genetic, and there is no basis for viewing it as anything other than an acquired sexual dysfunction.

To quote from the 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, "What is at all costs to be avoided, is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable.

"What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God's liberating grace" (n.11).

Robert Benn
Edmonton

Parish merger must be questioned

Many people attend daily Mass six days a week at St. Francis, they come from all over the city, some elderly have no cars and are within walking distance and do this all year round.

St. Matthew's has Mass an average of three days a week and not consistent. For Sundays are we asking the elderly to use the bus system, a day transportation service is reduced?

St. Francis has more parking and a church hall. St. Matthew's has no church hall. There are many activities in St. Francis and few in St. Matthew's.

Parishioners with cars - who appear to be the majority - could have no difficulty going to various churches in the area since a large number of parishioners who attend Sunday Mass do not fall into the boundary of St. Matthew's anyway.

Mona Smith
Edmonton

Prejudice led to putting article on back page

I am responding to an article you published concerning the Lac Ste. Anne pilgrimage. Sadly I discovered this story buried on the last page of your newspaper.

However, on the first page I found a similar article about a pilgrimage in Skaro. I believe these stories should have been placed the other way around.

Truly it is the Indians who are ancestorally Canadian. Natives have been rooted in Canada for centuries. If you cared about truth and heritage, you would appreciate this.

Audrey Lawrence
Edmonton

Time to round up some priests

I wonder if other parishes might be inspired to take on a similar task, particularly those parishes which are being adversely affected by the Transformation of Parishes. It seems to me that at least some of these parishes could have success going to Poland or the Philippines, or to some other country, to find an English-speaking priest and have him come to Canada and to this archdiocese.

If St. Emeric's can do it, why not others. Let's go!

J.C. Masson
Sherwood Park

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