Letters to the Editor

According to Pope Leo, “Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life.”  (“Pro-choice Illinois senator declines Catholic award,” October 17) I hold with the Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) that the just use of execution to “punish the guilty and protect the innocent” is “an act of paramount obedience" to the commandment prohibiting murder, and that it naturally tends to the preservation of human life.  The first edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) said the common good requires rendering the aggressor unable to inflict harm, which grounds the traditional Church teaching on the right and duty to punish commensurately with a crime’s gravity, “not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty,” where bloodless means are insufficient to protect human lives and public order. Please explain how I, without dissent or deviation from 19 centuries of pro-life Church teaching, went from being pro-life to being “not really pro-life.” —Steve Serra, Mission Viejo

The Oct. 17 Angelus cover showing the pilgrim image of Our Lady of Guadalupe said the image tour is bringing “hope to shaken LA immigrant community.”  And why is LA’s immigrant community shaken? Because of the Immigrant & Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids on this community. And who authorized these ICE raids? President Trump. And who voted for President Trump in November 2024? Fifty-five percent of all Catholics, according to the Pew Research Center. Think about that the next time you attend Mass. — Donald Bentley, La Puente

I was impressed by the interview with the founders of the new “SacredSpark” dating app in the Oct. 17 issue, and the success stories of helping youth Catholics “match” with future spouses. But I am not convinced that these kinds of apps, however well-intentioned, are the kind of solution Catholic leaders should be betting on to fix our modern marriage crisis. The Church has to be a place that prioritizes in-person encounters. We seem slow to learn the lessons of COVID-19: isolation hurts us, and the image we project of ourselves online is often divorced from reality. It’s beautiful when people fall in love and want to form a family together. But we should not be leaving that task to the internet. — Tony Perez, Miami, Florida

Father Ronald Rolheiser’s, OMI, father, (Oct. 3, Angelus) knew the correct political answer all along. It doesn’t take a Gallup poll to know that moral steadiness is what Jesus taught us long ago. Think back, the disciples were arguing along the way to Capernaum, “which one of them is the greatest,” and it looks like we are still arguing about that very same topic today. Each of us can find a way to model moral steadiness, just like Father Rolheiser’s dad did.  — Kim Hoelting, Salina, Kansas

Although one certainly shares the grief and prayers with the families of the two students who were shot and killed at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis (“A Time to Cling to Jesus,” Sept. 19 issue), and although one understands the sense of helplessness and the force of prayer in the midst of the unspeakable (“Minneapolis and the Mystery of Suffering”), isn’t there something missing? It’s the guns, children. And we are hopeless children until we realize that. Pope Leo did. Just after the shootings, he spoke to the crowd at St. Peter’s Square and shifted to English from Italian when he decried “the countless children killed and injured worldwide, please God stop this pandemic of arms large and small.” In 1996, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops spoke in favor of the assault weapons ban that held for 10 years and took the number of mass shootings way down. It’s part of our sickness that the ban was lifted in 2006, and the killing went back up again.  You will never legislate anger out of human existence. Neither will you pry away mental illness. But you can legislate against the hardware of death. You pray, of course, but the Gospels tell us you must act, too.  — Gregory Orfalea, Santa Barbara

Kudos to Amy Welborn for one heck of an article in the Sept. 17 issue of Angelus. Her review of “Triumph of the Heart,” the new film about St. Maximillian Kolbe, is honest, generous, and critical all at the same time. For me, her analysis of the movie (which I haven’t seen yet) addresses the deeper problem with saint films over the years: that most of them are lackluster, B-movie quality creations that don’t have the same kind of production value as the standard Hollywood movie. It seems that films like “A Hidden Life,” “Triumph of the Heart,” and the success of “The Chosen” suggest this genre is headed in the right direction. But for my part, I’m still here waiting for the perfect saint movie. — Alvaro Mendez, San Diego