Recent Letters

In the (Oct. 25) issue of Catholic San Francisco, we find a Catholic News Service article about Attorney General William Barr’s address at the University of Notre Dame’s Law School on the free exercise of religion.

Regarding changing Catholic doctrine on such teachings as contraception, priestly ordination of women and homosexual behavior, as John Henry Cardinal Newman pointed out in his “An Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine,” for a development of church teaching to be valid, it must not contradict sacred Scripture, the deposit of faith or the teaching magisterium of the church. Any contradiction would be a change and not valid church teaching. Contraception, women’s ordination and acceptance of homosexual behavior contradict all three. Therefore the church can never approve or change these teachings.

So much has been said and written recently about clerical celibacy because of the Amazon synod. We do have married clergy already if you consider Eastern rite churches and Episcopal priest converts to Catholicism who are married men with families.

It is unfortunate that the questionable actions of the synod are ignored. The article starts with Francis rebuking those who criticized a feather headdress (when he himself had recently criticized the saturno). It then quickly breezes over the most egregious part of the entire synod.

The letter from Father Gagan is in regard to an announcement in CSF regarding the conferring of the sacrament of confirmation in the “Latin rite” at Star of the Sea Parish. I believe the reporter was referring to the Latin language as opposed to the Latin rite.