Straight Facts for Story on Gay Catholics

Your story “They Pray Alone” really struck a chord. Gay, straight, man, woman, young, old--it doesn’t matter. All Catholics pray alone. The Pope, cardinals, bishops and priests are little more than superfluous, self-appointed middle men with pretenses to divinely ordained authority.

Many priests are genuinely decent, compassionate men, concerned with the lives of their congregations. But few of the men who actually run the Catholic Church are interested in matters of spirituality. The Church’s administration is the ultimate fascistic dictatorship, a remnant of bureaucracy/theocracy directly descended from the all-time champion of state despotism, the Roman Empire.

This elite, privileged male priesthood is contemptuous of everything that does not support the politics of patriarchal monotheism--particularly women and all notions of personal or social freedom.

NED MADDEN

San Clemente