Jesuit Reparations
Dear Editor: It is troubling that your paper (“Jesuits Assure Funding Pledge as Families of Slaves Eye ‘Hardliners” Oct. 1) offers such an extensive forum to the attempted shakedown of Jesuits for $100M, with the crafty operators’ dream of $1B by 2029.
Peter Kumelowski
Forest Hills
Editor’s note: The Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation, which is handling the reparations, was formed by the Jesuit order and the GU272 Descendants Association.
Thank You, Father Longalong
Dear Editor: It’s been only a few months since I started reading The Tablet. Now, I can’t wait to read it weekly. My favorite article so far has been Father Patrick Longalong’s “Sunday Scriptures.”
Father Longalong knows how to reach the hearts of everyone. He explains the scriptures much better through his personal experiences, which show his love of family, relatives, friends, and everybody. How wonderful it would be if more priests delivered their homilies the way that he presents them.
Thank you, Father Longalong, for helping us fully comprehend the scriptures.
Surely, you make reading the scriptures more simple and enjoyable to love them.
More power to you, and God bless you.
Carmen C. Rodriguez
Rego Park
Cryptocurrency and the Climate Crisis
Dear Editor: Given the financial problems facing many Catholic dioceses, it’s hard not to welcome the news that the Archdiocese of Washington is offering a cryptocurrency option for donations (“Washington Archdiocese Offers Crypto Option for Donations,” Sept. 24).
Perhaps, as the archdiocese’s development director suggests, making it “as easy as possible to donate” will help to reverse the financial losses incurred during the pandemic lockdown, as well as from recent lawsuits.
We need to be aware, however, that the production of these currencies — cryptocurrency mining, as it’s called — uses enormous amounts of energy which greatly increases greenhouse gas emissions.
The world’s biggest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, gives off more greenhouse gasses annually than some European countries.
Cryptocurrency is contributing directly to the destruction of God’s creation.
It’s part of what our Holy Father, in “Laudato Si,” calls “the technocratic paradigm” — using technical convenience to justify ignoring the cry of the earth.
The Archdiocese of Washington needs to rethink its decision.
Marian Ronan, Ph.D.
Ditmas Park
Use of Nukes in Ukraine
Dear Editor: Nothing is more dangerous than the alignment of religion and the nation-state when it concerns nuclear weapons.
“Rationality” may deter reasonable men from even entertaining the horrors of nuclear extermination.
When a Patriarch such as Kirill rallies “recruits” with the notion that God himself has blessed this war begun by a lunatic, we are on extremely perilous ground indeed. Heaven help us.
Raymond F. Roberts, Jr.
Bergenfield, N.J.
True Meaning of Being ‘Pro-Life’
Dear Editor: The Tablet puts forth its publication as “The Pro-Life Newspaper.”
And so many people write in condemning one political candidate or another because of their stance on abortion. But why is the other part of being pro-life, that of an end to capital punishment, is almost never mentioned?
The doctrine of pro-life clearly states: preservation of life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. It does not distinguish whose life, just an infant’s life, all life.
Why are so many Catholics single-focused? I don’t want to hear that the state has the right to take a life. If no one has that right in a deliberate act, such as abortion, how can some justify capital punishment?
Maria Mastromarino
Manalapan, N.J.