Recent Letters

Thank you for Archbishop Cordileone’s article on the “hard truths” of our faith and their power to move people (“’Greatest power to move people’ in ‘hard truths of our faith,’” Page HV6, July 26). The article is often beautiful; unfortunately, for all its beauty the article proceeds on a basic misunderstanding of human sexuality. Like many clergy, the archbishop is fixated on human plumbing. There is male and female and under certain circumstances their union begets children. The clergy reason that since procreation is one result, that must be the reason why God created male and female. And since procreation is one result it must be the only result and hence the clergy conclude that all marital acts must be “open” to procreation.

Kudos to reader Joe Hallisy’s letter in Catholic San Francisco (“Justice and the death penalty,” Aug. 23). It seems to me that over the years, the church has varied its position regarding capital punishment. As a Catholic, I become torn by alternating stances of the church on this subject.

The fine column, “The pope, capital punishment and Catholics” by Father Gerald Coleman (Aug. 23) is timely and very beneficial for us Catholics in the pews. He clearly explained the recent development of the change affecting No. 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding the death penalty. (Let us not gloss over the fact that capital punishment kills people.) Recent popes saw capital punishment as problematic, affronting human dignity. Pope Francis now clearly says the death penalty is inadmissible in all cases.

It is with disgust and disbelief that I have read the articles on clerical sex abuse by predator priests in the latest issues of Catholic San Francisco. This church is broken beyond repair until there are fundamental changes in the priesthood and church hierarchy.

Thanks for Ferrone, Zollner, Shaw and DiNardo. A recent PBS documentary on the “Wonders of Mexico” shows the tiniest of God’s creatures fearlessly protecting their young from predators – a prairie dog facing a snake, a mother fish refusing to feed herself so that she might ward off an attacker.