Readers Speak Out: November 8, 2020

Serious decline

I read with some concern your article of Oct. 24, “Regis, St. Mike’s alliance in works.” When, during my tenure as President of the University of St. Michael’s College (2015-18), I found that similar discussions had been launched, I argued against the initiative. Our faculty of theology was losing money and students and was, in my view, struggling academically. To the extent that it had an identity, it was largely indistinguishable from the sad, secular drift of the Toronto School of Theology.

You don’t solve a problem by making it bigger. Worse, in our case at St. Michael’s, we were spending vastly more per student keeping our tiny faculty of theology afloat than we were on the 5,000 students in our undergraduate division. It would be far better if both institutions acknowledged the serious decline in Catholic academic theology in this country, dedicated themselves to long-term rebuilding and renewal and at the same time agreed to do more to educate and support Catholic undergraduates.

David Mulroney,

Toronto

Respect life

I do not believe that the Catholic Church in Canada has vociferously condemned this Godless government.

Doctors who assist suicide damage the medical profession and break down the trust between the doctor and the patient. Most medical universities require their students to swear allegiance to respecting the dignity of human life. All lives matter and there appears to be a reluctance to regularly preach, in the interests of complacency, about the morality and the evils of abortion and euthanasia and their effect on the dignity and sanctity of human life.

I think that congregations are being allowed to drift in the interests of not “rocking the boat.”

Peter Nazareth,

Toronto

Freedom threat

Mr. Lou Iacobelli’s well-articulated letter that appeared in your issue of Oct. 12 should be read as a stark reminder that our continued nonchalant approach to globalization will result not only in the attenuation of our democratic freedoms but will compel us to accept as a part of this spectacle of multiculturalism social norms that divide rather than unite us.

Pope Francis’ liberalizing approach to the orthodoxy of Church’s social doctrines has certainly been welcomed by a majority of Catholics, but I feel he should be far more circumspect in promoting his open borders policy because of its unintended consequences as the ghastly murders of so-called blasphemers by Islamic terrorists in both France and England have proved. Secularism is the cornerstone of the west’s educational system, a cornerstone that Islamic radicalism is determined to replace.

I commend Pope Francis’ pursuit of peace which unfortunately appears to have been met with as determined an effort by the Islamic radicals to reject any change to expressing their beliefs in a manner they deem fit regardless of its “slaughter” of democracy.

J.E. Sequeira,

Pointe Claire, Que.

Evil weapons

I will lobby to make abortion illegal as soon as weapons of mass destruction are made illegal. Until proven otherwise, our living planet appears to be the first born of the cosmos and yet our species has engineered the ability to abort it with legal weapons.

Jesus warned that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. I assume He would update His warning to say the same about the “monstrous evil“ of nuclear weapons.

Gwen McGrenere,

Etobicoke, Ont.