Last Updated: Friday - 09/24/2010
June 28, 2010
WCR Letters to the Editor
Trustees need a hand from the Holy Spirit
Re: "Today's Catholic trustees must ask the hard questions" (WCR, June 7)
The WCR is to be commended on the June 7 editorial on Catholic education. It was a timely statement in that it alerts the Catholic community to the upcoming Catholic school board elections.
In this it calls for "people of courage and charity" to come forth to provide leadership as Catholic trustees.
Bishop Motiuk (2009 ACSTA convention) encapsulated the great responsibility of the trustee when he stated: "Being a trustee is a sacred task."
In addition to being timely the WCR editorial is significant because it challenges all in the Catholic community to become engaged in the discussion that must take place on Catholic education.
This great gift, which is part of the saving mission of the Church, is being subjected to a variety of secular and political forces that place it at serious risk.
As the editorial notes, trustees will have to ask "hard questions" and to boldly explore "new paths" if our Catholic schools are to be successful in their mission of evangelization.
The trustees will have to boldly engage the Catholic community in the necessary discussion on Catholic education and its identity if we are not to find ourselves in the same situation as has happened elsewhere in Canada where the Catholic community lost their Catholic schools.
All of this is indeed a "daunting" task but is one that can be effectively addressed by committed and courageous trustees and by committed and faith-filled Catholic teachers and administrators, working with the parents and all with the help of the Holy Spirit.
John Acheson
Where
The question of afterlife demands clarification
Re: Fathers Belanger and Rolheiser and hell (WCR, June 14).
I'm scandalized that Father Belanger's letter was printed without a clarifying comment about hell. He claims that we have carte blanche entry into heaven regardless of sin.
We know from Christ himself that all sins can be forgiven by God. We know from Christ himself that there is a hell. He spoke about it more often than heaven.
He taught us through his Catholic Church how to obtain forgiveness and in this he was very specific.
We are to repent, do penance and make a firm purpose of amendment. This satisfies God's love, his mercy and his justice.
Abusing priests have the same access to forgiveness as the rest of us and they have no guarantee unless they do their part to obtain it, without which, they will have a spot in hell, just as any others of us would.
In the same issue, Father Rolheiser speaks of the forgiveness of sin being possible merely through the love and forgiveness of practising members of the Church as contact with them is "touching the Body of Christ because our touch is Christ's."
Where is this coming from?
What Church do Fathers Belanger and Rolheiser represent? I would appreciate an answer.
A closing thought: I heard a pastor on EWTN say, "You don't have to believe in hell to go there."
Pauline LeBlanc
Where
Abusers, not God, choose their own afterlife
Re: "Love, not torture, abides in heaven," by Oblate Father Rene Belanger (WCR letters, June 14).
First, we have to get to heaven. Child sex abuse is not the way.
Was Jesus only kidding when he said, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it were better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea" (Matthew 18.6)?
Father Belanger bills and coos, "God will not torture or burn anyone in the fire of hell." Who is right?
Only the just and truly repentant will go into everlasting life and God's justice is not made void by his love. He is both love and justice.
It is the abusers who have shut God out of their lives; they, not God, have chosen their own after-life.
If we accept Father Belanger's permissive words, we can look forward to the atrocity of sex abuse continuing into the future and more souls will be lost to that "special place in hell."
Father Belanger's way is not God's way.
Helen Ferguson
St. Albert
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