Letters to the Editor

Heather King’s column in the Oct. 31 issue (“The Place No Human Should Go”) was disrespectful of people who are neurodivergent or on the autism spectrum. First, she lists a number of disorders, life conditions, and problems that have nothing to do with autism and then promptly describes them as being “behaviors on ‘the spectrum.’ ” Then she writes: “‘Neurodivergent’: give me a break.”  To diminish other people’s struggles or pain, to assume such a mocking tone is uncalled for.  — Gisele Fontaine   The author’s response: What I wrote was “Neurodivergent, give me a break. Who isn’t?” Neurodiversity is not a medical term, condition or diagnosis, but rather a nonmedical term that arose around 2000 for those who have differences in the way their brain works. In a July 5, 2023 article in “The Guardian,” Judy Singer, widely accredited with inventing the concept, called it a political movement and opined that “as a word, ‘neurodiversity’ describes the whole of humanity”: my exact point in asking, “Who isn’t neurodiverse?” With all that, my profound apologies if I conflated neurodiversity with autism (which is apparently a subset of neurodiversity), and special apologies if I sounded flippant or uncaring. Far from being insensitive to the plight of those whose brains may work slightly or significantly different than the norm, I thought I made it clear that I included myself in that group. The point in naming just a few possible deviations from the norm — the point in fact of the whole column — was to express my horror at the thought of trying to engineer such differences out of the human person. Assuming the science and technology existed, what if the powers-that-be started testing embryos for alcoholism — a disease that took out 20 years of my own life, for example — or homosexuality, or neurodivergence, and discarding the embryos that didn’t make the cut? Obviously many feel we’d all be better off, but I cannot share that view. My work for the last 30 years has constellated around the theme of the light that shines in darkness, including the darkness of my own lifelong emotional, mental and spiritual struggles. I would not be the person I am without those struggles, and I certainly have never wished not to have been born. That is not to celebrate suffering: not anyone else’s, not my own. It’s to share the deeply Catholic view expressed by the French intellectual Simone Weil: “The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural cure for suffering, but a supernatural use for it.’ ” — Heather King

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