NEW YORK (NY)
The New York Times
March 31, 2018
To the Editor:
“This Easter, I’ll Be Back in Church,” by Margaret Renkl (Op-Ed, March 26), reflects my sentiments exactly.
Although I haven’t stopped going to church, I have grown distant from the friends I had there. I can’t accept how my fellow Catholics can support a president and legislators who pass laws that hurt the poor and the needy. To care for them is at the core of our faith.
It broke my heart to see these people and others who desperately need health care demonstrating in the capital last year against repeal of the Affordable Care Act and some legislators voting for repeal anyway.
The silence of the bishops on so many of these destructive actions also leaves me feeling that no one in the church (except for the pope) is speaking with any moral authority.
MARJORIE IVES, JUPITER, FLA.
To the Editor:
Re “Francis, the Anti-Strongman,” by Paul Elie (Sunday Review, March 25):
Pope Francis’s persona belies a dictatorial penchant. He deals with challenges by removing those who disagree with him. The peremptory dismissal of members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for no apparent reason, is a case in point.
His rigging of the Synod on the Family and dubious editing of its summation in “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”) — an incomplete citation from John Paul II — is nothing short of dictatorial. And his circumventing of canonical process to initiate change — for example, changing the rite of foot washing on Holy Thursday, from a recognition of the uninterrupted transmission of spiritual authority from the apostles to succeeding generations of bishops, to an open-to-all act of charity — certainly seems autocratic.
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