Catholic dogma on abortion
Re “With bishops like these, it’s hard to be Catholic,” Opinion, June 10
Jackie Calmes is the wrong person to comment on Roman Catholic bishops’ positions on faith. She has forgotten that Catholics in serious (mortal) sin are expected to use the sacrament of reconciliation before receiving the Eucharist.
As San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has stated, this is a matter of science. Biologists agree human life begins at conception. Therefore abortion is murder. Public opinion has shifted to the right-to-life position, with medical science advancing to the point that we can now save many premature infants. Better views of developing infants also helps.
A recent Associated Press poll showed that 80% of Americans believe abortion should be mostly illegal in the third trimester, and 65% said the same for the second trimester. Even if the results were different, killing people can never be decided by votes. Didn’t some people do that in the 1930s?
The first Christians saw abortion, as it was common in the Roman Empire, as wrong. They did not need modern science to see it as evil.
There cannot be compromise on this issue. Benedict Lucchese
Camarillo
I have in many ways been attracted to the Catholic Church my whole life — its beauty, its historical traditions, its theological rigor.
And yet any time I start to contemplate conversion, I consider its stance on contraception, which makes no sense to me and today seems mostly to be downplayed.
Now, what’s keeping me from the church is American bishops’ insistence that the most important moral issue of our day is outlawing abortion under any circumstances.
A family member who desperately wanted children had an abortion last year because she had an ectopic pregnancy. Without the abortion, she would be dead. Instead today, she is an expectant mother. Erica Hahn
Monrovia
Calmes’ op-ed article taking issue with some of the positions of the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church is a poor attempt to deflect attention from true church doctrine.
The church is not Burger King — you can’t have it your way.
Jeffrey Littell Costa Mesa
The Diocese of Marquette in Michigan says
that pastors should deny Communion to transgender, gay and nonbinary Catholics “unless the person has repented.”
Can you imagine a pastor asking each person who comes to receive Communion whether or not they are transgender, gay or nonbinary, and if so, have they repented?
Greg Bristol Santa Barbara