Madam, - The controversy over the Vatican's latest publication from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith raises some big moral issues.
If the second greatest commandment of Christ is to love one another, the first being to love God, then we must examine the obstacles to love. Love is not a soft option and because of this, it is probably the area where most us fail continually, which is why we suffer in one form or another.
In Eastern religions such as Hinduism and especially Buddhism which pre-date Christianity by about 5,000 years, there is a wide concept of universal compassion. This is not just a concept or an aspiration, but an all encompassing experience of empathy with everything that lives, moves and has being. It is called the path of non-violence. Non-violence in this sense does not simply mean the absence of weapons or violent deeds, but it is a whole state of mind, non-judgment and language that brings about peace and harmony firstly in ourselves and then in the wider world.
The Judaeo-Christian culture, unfortunately, while having many positive aspects has also contributed to much violence down the centuries by an excess of righteous judgment and violent language. If we examine Christ's teaching in the gospel, we see that the few times he makes judgments are in the context of how we succeed or fail in our efforts to love and help the oppressed, particularly those who don't fit into respectable society, and those who lie outside the boundaries of what we would call normal sexual behaviour - Mary Magdalen, for example.
Christ reserves his harshest judgment for the leaders of religion who imposed harsh rules and stood in judgment of others, while themselves leading lives of hypocrisy. He also reserves very harsh judgment for those who harm the young and make them lose their faith in God.
Perhaps the old maxim should have been applied by the authors of this Vatican document. If there is nothing good to say on a particular subject it is perhaps better to say nothing at all. - Yours, etc.,
RACHAEL STANLEY, Palmerston Grove, Dublin 6.
Madam, - Is it so unreasonable that the Pope, in an attempt to relate explicit Biblical teaching to the empirical reality of life, should remind us of the problems inherent in the institutionalised equation of various forms of recreational, hedonistic sex, such as that between two men or two women, and the unique character of that particular sexual behaviour which alone has, in addition, the awesome natural power to generate new human life?
Can this profound, self-evident distinction really have been so obscured by 30 years of contraception? - Yours, etc.,
Rev Fr DAVID O'HANLON, C.C., Parochial House, Kentstown, Navan, Co Meath.