Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

WCR Letters to the Editor

A time of thanksgiving

All this and the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament as well!

Your article in the March 28 edition onDivine Mercy Sunday inspired me to make public my thanks. I have taken time off from my job for the past several years to celebrate this very special gift.

I want to thank Archbishop Collins for reiterating once again at the Chrism Mass the absolute necessity of the Eucharist to our faith, stating that it is the source and summit of all we are and again, as he has since becoming our good shepherd, encouraged all priests to make available to the faithful the opportunity for Eucharistic Adoration.

I believe Pope John Paul II accomplished what he did due to his time spent with Our Lord and I thank him for devoting this year to the Eucharist.

I want to thank Father Ray and Father Vic and their helpers for their efforts in bringing us Divine Mercy celebrations and adoration.

I am also thankful for Father Len and the priests at St. Joseph's Basilica for the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament on the first Fridays and first Saturdays. This makes the devotion of the nine first Fridays to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the devotion of the five first Saturdays to our sweet and blessed mother very special.

My prayer to John Paul II, who I am convinced will be an even-greater intercessor than he was pope, will be to inspire priests to celebrate these wonderful gifts and devotions with us and to re-educate us on the indulgences we can receive for ourselves and our loved ones, especially those who are deceased and can no longer pray for themselves.

Wes Bentley
Edmonton

Spiritual 'correctness?'

It's my sincerest hope that Dorothy Didow's rant about "moral order" was a clever editorial ploy to incite a response from the more moderate, and dare I say more "informed and educated" among the flock. Her "white race" reference and her conclusion that the "decline" of western civilization is imploding sounds like the ultra-fundamentalist banter spun in the cleverest of fashions by hateful people south of the border.

Not unlike her southern counterparts, she concludes that "humanism" is eroding our civilization. Oddly, I'm still searching for her sought after anti-humanistic civilization that survives and thrives spiritually, millennia after millennia because it is inflexible, intolerant and married to a recycled version of 1950s McCarthyism.

Having said this, a civilization devoid of humanism and "rights," means we can then get on with the business of keeping "others" in their place while the rest of us - I assume this would mean white, Roman Catholics - can live morally.

I would state with a conviction equal to Mrs. Didow, that a Church driven by dogmatic tradition rather than the love of Christ is a very "shallow" interpretation of the kingdom of God.

If Mrs. Didow is "the voice" of the flock, I'm fearful that my children, my wife and I have been baptized into an ever-increasingly insular, xenophobic faith, being led to its untimely demise by "false prophets" within the ranks.

C. Woelfle
Edmonton

Pope John Paul's life blessed our world

Although I never met or even saw John Paul II in person during the past 26 years, I came to love and adore him because his love and faith in God helped me in my journey of faith.

In celebrating the life of John Paul II it is absolutely wonderful how many millions of lives he touched and what a truly good and decent man he was - a man of God. The world is a better place because of John Paul II.

Now he is at home with the Lord.

Michael McCafferty
Regina

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