SIR – The issue of abortion and the right to life of unborn children right across the Western world is bound to be a major consideration when casting a political vote (Letter, December 2).
If only we had someone in any country who was squeaky clean and who upheld the right to life of the unborn, created in God’s image and likeness, it would be wonderful.
Trump is not my kind of man. Hillary Clinton is not my kind of woman, and if elected we know she would have made the whole world, not just part of the US, unsafe for any unborn child, male or female. We must remember that feminists of her kind approve of the abortion of unborn baby girls. An Evangelical friend of mine recently asked me to pray for America. She is an American and, guess what, leads one of the 40 Days for Life in Wales. She is an absolute dream of a Christian, so loving and caring to all she meets, especially in the period of 40 Days for Life.
We need to pray very hard for Mr Trump and for Hillary Clinton and hope that the President-elect will calm his ways. One thing we know already is that he is appointing people to aid the protection of unborn children in America, and indeed throughout the world; whereas we know Hillary was and is a strong supporter of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the leading force attacking unborn human life across the world.
Yours faithfully,
Paul Botto
Cardiff
SIR – There is a dangerous tendency in the Church today to tone down its age-old teaching so as to accommodate those who find it “difficult to accept” its harsher aspects – particularly in the areas of sex, divorce and remarriage, to say nothing of the very real, terrible possibility of hell. It is deemed more charitable and less discriminatory to meet them “where they are” and gradually lead them to perfect obedience to Church rules. Very reasonable, apparently.
But this is not the Catholic faith that produced all those marvellous saints. Our Lord did not say that He would accept a partial obedience to His commands, but to all weak and strong: “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”(and start right now!).
When we inevitably fail in this, we have Confession and a new start on our journey to the required perfection. We are thus provided for many falls, even 70 times seven, by one who understands our weaknesses better than any contemporary would-be spiritual psychologist. He said to the woman taken in adultery, “Go and sin no more,” and not “Gradually and gently detach yourself from this man.”
He said many other harsh and politically incorrect things but you seldom hear them mentioned nowadays. You have to ferret them out for yourself, even if the Gospel is incomplete without them.
Yours faithfully,
J Allen
By email
SIR – Many years ago I had the privilege of a meeting with the eminent moral theologian Bernhard Häring. Speaking of remarriage after divorce, he distinguished between someone abandoning a loving spouse to go off with another, and the state of the long-term divorced after the breakdown of a prior marriage, which he described as a quasi-widowhood.
In his recent apostolic letter Misericordia et Misera, Pope Francis writes: “We have to remember that each of us carries the richness and the burdens of our personal lives; this is what makes us different from everyone else. Our life with its joys and sorrows is something unique and unrepeatable that takes place under the merciful gaze of God.
“This demands, especially of priests, a careful, profound and far-sighted spiritual discernment, so that everyone, none excluded, can feel accepted by God, participate actively in the life of the community, and be part of the People of God which journeys tirelessly towards the fullness of his kingdom of justice, love, forgiveness and mercy.”
I hope Bernhard Häring’s method of distinction will help those who may have agreed with the harshness of Cardinal Burke et al (Cover story, December 2), to see the loving pastoral reasoning of the words of His Holiness, as quoted above.
Yours faithfully,
Elizabeth Price (Mrs)
By email
SIR – In the article “Is the liturgy a laughing matter?” (News focus, October 14), your reporter recalls Archbishop Welby telling Pope Francis the joke: “What’s the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.”
To the laity, the various directions, guidelines and opinions can cause confusion: for example, the need for the priest to face east when saying Mass; how to be respectful to the ashes of those cremated; and so on.
A recent Sunday Mass leaflet contained a relevant reflection, the main points of which were: people are exasperated when they feel that the Church is over-preoccupied with tiny details of meaning and arguing for the sake of arguing. We believe in the “deposit of faith”, in the essentials of our faith; but customs,eg language, performance of the liturgy or the way the teaching of the Church is presented, are not part of the deposit of faith.
The reflection concludes with this advice: “In what is essential, there must be unity; in what is doubtful, there must be freedom; in everything, there must be charity.”
Yours faithfully,
David Murnaghan
By email
SIR – A sevenfold response to Clara Watson’s, “Embryos are people, too” (Feature, December 2). The “outward” beginning of human personhood manifests an inward action of God (cf Genesis 4:1). Each of us is equally in receipt of a uniquely human life. God’s love takes forward the irrevocable gift of life. Each one of us is a witness to the beginning of human personhood. Embryological development entails psychological development. Each human being is a person-in-relationship.
Relationships are forever.
Yours faithfully,
Francis Etheredge
By email
SIR – Benedict Rogers says Western governments are deluding themselves when they argue that having a closer relationship with China enables them to exert more pressure on human rights issues (Cover story, December 9). But the opposite strategy: distance and denunciation has not worked either. Is it better for the Holy See to respect the status quo, under which countless fellow Catholics suffer, or to engage and push for change, however modest?
Yours faithfully,
Gerald Johnstone
By email
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