Revenue-Reaping Mausoleum

Re “Crypts That Keep On Giving,” Feb. 8: Your article gives me the impression that somewhere along the way of its 2,000-year history the Catholic Church has lost its spiritual way. The thought of selling crypts under the new Los Angeles cathedral, with the price going up as one gets closer to the altar, strikes me as very similar to the practice of selling indulgences (to decrease time spent in purgatory) in the 16th century, which was a factor in the tumultuous history of those times that included numerous religious wars.

And to justify the practice by comparing it to age-old cathedrals in Europe where the powerful and the famous are buried fails to take note of that time, when the rulers, the rich and the powerful were thought to be closer to God. I think that we, as a society, have grown a bit more sophisticated than that.

A church should be a place that includes everyone and a place where one can take a breath of “clean, spiritual fresh air.” Somehow, what the diocese wants to do doesn’t seem to measure up to what the church founders would have wanted. By the way, I was born and raised a Catholic.

Greg W. Garrotto

Los Angeles