This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
Half of Catholics don't share view
"If I did not believe in what the Catholic Church teaches, I would not call myself a Catholic" writes Francisca Martinez ("Secularism part of birth rate fall", Mailbox April 6).
This is an extreme view and would mean that more than half the Catholics in England should stop calling themselves Catholic.
(The Catholic publication The Tablet summarises its 2008 survey on the response of Catholics to the Church's teaching on birth control as follows: "Today most practicing Catholics ignore its teaching on birth control and more than half think it should be revised.")
Happily, with the new Pope, we can hope that a change is coming and that the teachings of scholastic theology, with its ideas on sex, will get less emphasis and the teachings of Jesus will be given more prominence.
Pope Francis, talking to journalists, expresses this hope like this: "Oh, how I wish for a Church that is poor and for the poor".
When Pope Francis sees the terrible distress in those countries where populations repeatedly double – mainly in Africa and the Middle East to Pakistan – the change will surely come, and I hope then that Ms Martinez and I will be on the same side.
Gerald Danaher, Ravenstone
This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
New Pope appears to have interests of oppressed at heart
We have had a break with tradition in two respects after the Jesuit cardinal of Latin America, Jorge Bergoglio, of Argentina, was elected Pope.
"He has sent me to bring good news to the poor,To proclaim liberty to captives,And to the blind new sight,To set the downtrodden free."
This quotation from Isaiah is to be found at the beginning of St Luke's gospel soon after the infancy narratives.
Indeed, it is in this gospel that Jesus Himself is depicted as drawing attention to the prophecy with respect to outlining his own personal mission.
The attempt to realise these objectives, more especially with respect to the ministry of priests and nuns of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America, has proved deeply controversial for the Vatican, certainly during the past 40 years or so.
Nowhere better could the oppression of the poor be better illustrated in this continent than that which existed to an alarming extent not so long ago in El Salvador.
It was in this country that the majority of the wealth was in the hands of a few families.
Further, as is often the case in these political circumstances, the military was utilised, at all costs, to protect the status quo.
Those who spoke out in favour of social justice for the poor were executed in substantial numbers, especially priests, nuns and teachers.
Even more significant, with reference to the election of the present Pope, Francis, a number of Jesuit priests who were teachers at the university were persecuted.
One person in particular who stood out during this horrific period was the former Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero – assassinated in 1980 by government troops while celebrating mass in San Salvador at a small hospital chapel called La Divina Providentia.
Such was his popularity that an estimated 250,000 persons attended his funeral.
This was the price paid for speaking out in prophetic manner against poverty, social injustice, assassinations and torture.
The dilemma facing the Church at the time was that its priests, in the context of putting into practice what it called Liberation Theology, were openly aligning themselves with aspects of Marxism.
In simple terms, there was sympathy with the ideology's concern that radical changes should take place in the structure of society in order that much of the suffering encountered by the poor and oppressed could be alleviated.
By the same token, the Church has focused on a form of action in both Latin America and Africa that has largely steered clear of politics and has therefore been less controversial – that of Cafod.
This is the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, which basically uses as its motto "Cafod helps people to help themselves".
It concerns itself chiefly with the education of the poor such that they will become less dependent on short-term aid.
Farmers, for instance, can be helped to escape from a subsistence level of existence – one at the mercy of droughts and other vagaries of climatic conditions – by adopting more-productive measures, particularly in terms of being loaned modern machinery.
So this background to the Church in Latin America has particular poignancy for the Pope, as his ministry has been spent against this backcloth and, though at present we've seen or heard little of him, I'm sure we are in for an interesting time.
Most certainly in the spirit of the saint represented in his namesake, and his actions so far, I don't feel he is one who will dwell on much pomp and ceremony.
David Abbott, Stoke Golding
This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury (but not on its website)
Tell us of talks
It was an interesting First Person column by Ather Mirza (Mercury, February 22) regarding the discovery of Richard III.
The part of the story that fascinates me is that the Church of England is to reinter the remains of a Catholic king in a Protestant cathedral, presumably with a Church of England service.
Leicester is ell-known for its co-operation between religions, of which this must be a good example, so would not the negotiations that took place also be worth telling?
Patrick Trigg, Oadby
This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
Laudable church aim is quite impossible
John Burrows expressed a "dream" that a new Pope could empower inter-communion between Catholic and Protestant churches (Mailbox, February 21).
Indeed, this is a very laudable aim – but, as he realises, it is at present an impossibility, as Catholic and Protestant interpretations of Holy Communion differ so radically.
It would, therefore, be quite inappropriate for church members to receive something they do not accept or believe.
The outgoing Holy Father has made available a facility called the Ordinariat, which is a short-track for Anglican clergy to return home to the Catholic fold and by which many of the cherished Anglican traditions can be maintained, as long as essential Catholic teachings are accepted and upheld.
A significant number of clergy have used this facility in order to enter into full communion with Rome. Meanwhile, we can continue to pray for Christian unity.
Mark W Jacques, Quorn
This letter appears in today's Leicester Mercury:
I have a dream about next Pope
Martin Luther King famously declared "I have a dream!". That dream was to unite black and white Americans as one equal family.
Well, I too have a dream. That whoever is elected the next Pope, will issue his first encyclical as follows: "That the distinction between Roman Catholic and Protestant be no more. For we are all Christians under God and thus, from this day forth, all Christians are welcome to take the sacraments at our churches."
It is sadly but a dream.
John Burrows, Humberstone
