Madam, - I welcome the sentiments on reconciliation and healing expressed in the timely article by Father Richard Lyng, OSA (Rite and Reason, May 19th).
However, I was dismayed to find no reference in it to the crying need for reconciliation in our (his and my) Church because of the alienation of so many, men as well as women, because of the continuing ban on women's ordination on the grounds of gender.
I believe that this is a really great problem within the Roman Catholic Church today, and that the number who feel ostracised and deeply offended by the ban is growing apace. I also believe that its continuance mocks our efforts at reconciliation.
Father Lyng says that in the matter of reconciliation "we would expect some guidance from the Christian churches". Indeed. The need for my Church and his to address this matter becomes daily more urgent, I believe.
Injustice ignored is injustice condoned - hardly the best Christian stance. And I wonder why we should expect our fellow Christians to be interested in reconciliation with us while this glaring injustice holds.
We need to get our own house in order if we wish to offer anything of value to our neighbours.
I wish the Conference very well. I also hope this subject will have its rightful place high on the agenda. - Yours, etc.,
BETTY MAHER,
Vernon Grove,
Dublin 6.
Madam, - Father Richard Lyng on Confession (Rite and Reason, May 19th), like so many modernisers, has gone full circle.
Today, I rather thought, "listening" was the name of the game - not talking down to people or over them, but listening to them, with experience, becoming, indeed a "listening Church".
But now I discover that one of the ways that the Catholic Church has always listened to people on a one-to-one basis and allowed them to have their say in their own words (an original form of "active participation"), namely individual, auricular Confession of sins, should be suppressed.
Has Father Lyng not learnt - from recent events if nothing else - that conspiracies of silence about wrongdoing do not heal anyone?
Clericalism and the mystification of the priesthood too, I was led to believe in seminary, are among the greatest evils in history and were thankfully dealt a long overdue coup de grace by "Vatican II".
According to Father Lyng, however, a Catholic priest can at last decide to wave his hands over any mute and passive crowd and all sins in the room instantaneously disappear!
The shamans will be green with envy. - Yours, etc.,
Rev Father DAVID
O'HANLON, CC,
Parochial House,
Kentstown,
Navan,
Co Meath.