A Response to Peter Amato
Dear Editor: I agree with Mr. Amato (Readers’ Forum, Nov. 20), about our leaders who say they are Catholic and are allowed to receive Communion.
President Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Andrew Cuomo believe in abortion. Allowing Catholics to feel that they can have an abortion and not have committed a sin is simply not true. You are killing a baby.
Anne Marie Kostner
Glendale
Abortion is Sinful
Dear Editor: Regarding the letter from Peter Amato (Readers’ Forum, Nov. 20): To state “Persons at Mass who come forward for Eucharist, are following their conscience, the laws of the church and the commandments,” is a total fabrication when it comes to those individuals who support abortion.
Repeat after me: “Thou shall not kill” and Church Law clearly states abortion is sinful.
Why do Catholics see no sin in taking the life of the innocent unborn, but believe capital punishment is wrong?
Paul Manheimer
Oakland Gardens
Communion and Health Care
Dear Editor: I am discouraged from those within the Catholic Church to refuse Communion to public officials who support abortion.
There is a wide range of political issues that affect life. My father was sick with cancer. The Affordable Care Act saved his life. Without this law, my father would have been unable to purchase supplemental insurance and would have died. My Dad’s life is as valuable and made in the same image of God as the unborn.
As someone who was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church along with attending Catholic school from K-12, I believe my perspective needs to be taken into account (My father attends Mass every Sunday).
Coming from a working-class background and being immigrants, my father and mother sacrificed to send me to Catholic School. The truth is, one candidate for president and one party wished to preserve the Affordable Care Act, and another candidate and another political party policies would have prevented my father from purchasing the health insurance he needed to preserve his life.
Francisco Mena
Briarwood
Thoughts on Mr. Weigel and Mr. Amato
First, let me thank The Tablet and George Weigel — The Tablet for presenting Mr. Weigel’s column regularly, and Mr. Weigel for his insights into what’s going on in the world today and still maintaining a clearly Catholic focus.
His recent column (“Catholic Progressives And the Culture War.” Nov. 17) was spot on. One of the first thoughts that came to my mind is from a trailer to the movie, “The Rite,” starring Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins’s character, the experienced exorcist, says to the apprentice, “Michael, you don’t believe in the devil. You should, he believes in you.”
Mr. Weigel did not bring the work of the devil into his discussion, but it is there when he mentions abortion, euthanasia, mutilation, and other issues which the Church has identified as intrinsic evils.
I believe these culture wars ARE the work of Satan, and, as Pope St. Paul VI noted, “From some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the Temple of God.”
I also agree strongly with Mr. Paul Amato’s letter, especially in reference to times past when bishops and popes brought other leaders to task over their transgressions, especially with regard to our Lord in the Eucharist. Over the years I have looked at much of Church history and Mr. Amato’s letter brought to mind the case of the prophet Nathan chastising King David for his transgressions.
Or St. Ambrose who took the Roman Emperor to task who, in a fit of rage, massacred 70,000 Thessalonians, refusing him Communion until he publicly repented outside the church for several months. Refusing Communion for public figures who act in such an atrocious manner is not new in Catholic history, it is just that our bishops today have not had the courage to accomplish it.
Tom Klocek
Chesapeake, Va.
An Upsetting Outcome
Dear Editor: The decision of U.S. bishops not to withhold Communion to politicians that support abortion completes the moral bankruptcy of the Roman Catholic Church in America.
After decades of untold harm caused by sexual predators trolling our Churches and their harm being covered up, we now see a Church unable to live by its own basic dogma and beliefs because it wishes to curry political favor.
The Roman Catholic Church’s position is that divorced Catholics cannot receive Communion, but Catholic politicians that support and enable abortion can receive Communion.
That is far more despicable than anything done to trigger Luther’s Reformation.
Francis Gerard Rushford
Bay Ridge