Catholic Crisis-- or Not

Re “A Leap of Faith,” Opinion, April 28: Jack Miles quotes Peter Steinfels, saying that “observers of Catholicism are straining--and failing--to find a comparable event against which to measure the current crisis.”

Sexual shenanigans by members of the clergy are not new in the 21st century; widespread knowledge of those shenanigans is not a 21st century phenomenon.

Chaucer wrote about the dalliances of the friar--he seduced, impregnated and “married off many a young woman--at his own expense. He was a noble pillar of his order!” Moliere’s Tartuffe attempted seduction. In order for these literary works to make sense in their times, there had to be general knowledge of clerical peccadilloes.

Read and ye shall find that there is little new in the news.

Gene Touchet

Cathedral City

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Miles points out that Roman Catholics can easily find everything except papal authority in another church. And so he left the church. Although, as a Roman Catholic, I respect Miles’ decision, may I point out that there is one thing that no other church except the Roman Catholic Church will ever have; namely, me and countless other Catholics who will not abandon the church when it needs us most. It’s a “leap of faith,” Mr. Miles--not hopscotch.

Jeremiah J. Flanigan

Long Beach

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Miles’ analysis of the “Catholic sex crisis of 1968” goes awry when he argues that papal authority is invalid when it fails to meet the “needs of the faithful.” Since when are abortion and artificial contraception “needs”? The desire to take another human life in order to avoid inconveniencing one’s own life qualifies as a selfish desire, not a need. Paul VI’s refusal to change the church’s teaching to fit modern political expediencies was perhaps the most courageous exercise of papal authority to occur in the last century.

Applying American democratic ideals to the church misses the point and demonstrates the arrogance of those who would do so. To imagine that today’s American Catholics, ill-formed in their faith and immersed in our current corrupt culture, know more about objective moral truth than a church established by Jesus Christ that has exercised unbroken papal authority for the past centuries boggles the mind. Those who disagree can join a Protestant denomination. I pray that the American Catholic Church does not follow Miles’ advice.

Leslie Ryland

San Marcos