LETTERS

Tarsands letter 'excellent'

The Editor: The article in the March 10 PM, “Bouchard discusses reaction to tarsands pastoral,” is an excellent one.

Bishop Luc Bouchard should be commended for his pastoral letter and his subsequent messages calling for a moratoriun on the development of the oilsands in the Fort McMurray area.

Bouchard’s messages will be welcomed by others who have pointed out the hazards that te Alberta oilsands developent has and will continue to have on all life in the Fort McMurray area and possibly beyond.

I will send the March 10 article to the Saskatchean Environmental society. — Peggy Durant, Saskatoon

Church faces great crisis

The Editor: The Roman Catholic Church is facing its greatest crisis of credibility since the Reformation, as new revelations (pun intended) emerge almost daily about who knew about cases of sexual abuse and how it was handled, hushed up or swept under the carpet.

And what is the best the church can do to respond to the worldwide wave of revulsion, anger and rising anti-Catholicism from outside the flock, and dismay, embarrassment and rage from within? Let’s trot out the Shroud of Turin and get the laity back on their knees and out of our hair. There’s nothing like a good dose of medieval, unthinking piety to take their minds off the fact that the church is not the moral compass it should be in the 21st century.

Even if the Shroud had the faintest chance of being a genuine relic of our Lord, a supposition which can be easily dismissed by a careful reading of John 20:5-7, the exhibition of a relic is neither an adequate nor a relevant response to a church in this kind of turmoil. Much more appropriate, after a thorough housecleaning of all known perpetrators, clergy or lay, male or female, would be a profound rethinking of the nature of authority and hierarchy in the church, from the papacy down to the humblest catechist or youth group leader.

In a year in which the Quebec government can command that Muslim women uncover their faces in order to access government services, the Catholic church can no longer credibly place itself outside and above the law. Obligatory celibacy, an all-male clergy and refusing to accept and encourage monogamy among our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters are all policies that have been tried for a long, long time, and have led us into this debacle.

Educated lay people don’t expect their leaders to be saints, but rather fellow sinners who try hard every day to live a life of honesty, integrity and service. We are not served well by magisterial responses that downplay the enormity of the situation or attempt to distract us with relics, processions and rituals. — Darryl Torchia, Winnipeg