PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
Monica Yant Kinney, Inquirer Columnist
The e-mail was brief and blunt.
“I would be happy to receive good and professional advice, but not when it is delivered as cynically as you have done it,” the writer scolded. “Christians do not speak to others that way.”
That missive is one of a dozen e-mails readers forwarded me from their remarkable electronic conversations with Archbishop Charles J. Chaput. From the moment the conservative yet high-tech cleric arrived to lead the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, he made it his policy to connect with his new flock.
The archbishop shared his e-mail address, shepherd@adphila.org, and vowed to respond personally, so Catholics flooded him with concerns about school closings, parish politics, and, of course, the clergy sex-abuse crisis and criminal trials.
In a recent interview with my colleague David O’Reilly, Chaput said he “received more negative mail about clergy” during his first year in Philadelphia “than in all the 23 years I’ve served as bishop.”
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