Madam, - In reference to Brendan Butler's "Rite and Reason" column of June 20th, it is not correct to identify some anonymous right-wing Catholic group as inspiring the reservations expressed by the bishops in regard to Cura's links with the "Positive Options" leaflet issued by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency. In so far as I know, the questions were raised from within the membership of Cura, from those who had committed themselves to the professional counselling which Cura provides.
This counselling has a definite orientation. It respects the principle of protection for unborn life which is central to the Catholic ethic.
Hence the conscientious objection to any measure which would lead to or facilitate the recourse to abortion. To set aside this conscientious objection would harbour inconsistency. Jurisdictions which admit of abortion typically respect this factor of conscientious objection on the part of individuals.
I am sure that Brendan Butler also accepts the implications for conscience in this context. - Yours, etc,
Mgr DENIS O'CALLAGHAN, PP, Mallow.
Madam - The outrageous assertions in Brendan Butler's "Rite and Reason" article (June 20th) require a response.
As its title, "Bishops give in to pressure from fundamentalism" indicates, he uses his dissent from our bishops' Cura policy to tar supporters - among whom, as I have mentioned before in your columns, I am happy to count myself - of Pope Benedict XVI with the abusive "fundamentalism" and "right wing" tags.
To support his illogical deductions he makes these insulting, unsubstantiated assertions: "The Bishops' Conference has given in to pressure from Irish Catholic fundamentalism, which has received a new lease of life since the election of Pope Benedict XVI. The Cura issue is being used by these [ sic] right-wing organisations as a Trojan horse to further control Irish Catholicism and to bring us back to an era when bigotry and the ill-treatment of women with a crisis pregnancy was the norm of Church and society."
You, Madam, collude in this insulting travesty by reproducing the foregoing unsubstantiated assertion as a three-column introduction to the article, thereby giving it more chance of being read than it would have if it had been published only as the article's penultimate sentence.
Trying to have things both ways, Mr Butler reproduces the 1968 Cardinal Ratzinger primacy-of-conscience view recently paraded in your columns by Fr Seán Fagan SM to serve his dissident purposes.
Of course, we are obliged to follow our consciences. But when we do so to disconnect from church guidance, we may find ourselves in rather strange waters.
For example, following the logic that we may use the primacy-of-conscience clause to assist, with information, those who feel conscience-free to have unjustified pregnancy terminations, may we not do likewise to assist those who feel conscience-free to self-destruct via assisted suicide?
May we not do likewise, too, to assist those who feel conscience-free to molest or rape to satisfy their sex cravings? Is the latter - in which, however heinous the activity, people do not die - more objectionable than either of the former? - Yours, etc,
JOE FOYLE, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.