THE EDITOR, Sir:

I wish to express my disappointment with those Catholic bishops who allow politicians that support abortion and embryonic stem cell research to receive holy communion.

In most, if not all cases, these politicians are fully aware of what they are doing. They know the church teaches that abortion is a grave sin and they also know that they are cooperating in it by promoting it both publicly and legally.

Common sense dictates that when gravely immoral policies find themselves into law, they begin to incrementally, surreptitiously, almost invisibly, impose themselves on society by both coercion and force - marginalising in the process both religion and those of religious faith.

Guilt

When bishops allow such politicians to receive holy communion under the guise that all culpability for guilt lies solely with the communicant rather than also with the minister of communion, these bishops themselves foster and encourage this dictatorship of relativism.

Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl's claim that bishops should only be responsible for those people in their own dioceses is a claim to "territorial morality" - in essence the same slogan and formula used by politicians who claim the right to lead a double life, - a private life in which they supposedly oppose the evil of abortion and a public life in which they allow and even promote this evil in others.

What form of mental 'compart-mentalisation' or bicameral thinking can allow an intelligent thinking human to rationalise this way? On the contrary, scripture has it that "no man can serve two masters" (Matt. 6: 24).

I am, etc,

PAUL KOKOSKI

pkokski@mountaincable.net