Visit the AO Shop

EVERY WEEK WE PUBLISH a selection of letters we receive in response to something you've read at Anglicans Online. Stop by and have a look at what other AO readers are thinking.

Alas, we cannot publish every letter we receive. And we won't publish letters that are anonymous, hateful, illiterate, or otherwise in our judgment do not benefit the readers of Anglicans Online. We usually do not publish letters written in response to other letters. We edit letters to conform with standard AO house style for punctuation, but we do not change, for example, American spelling to conform to Canadian orthography. On occasion we'll gently edit letters that are too verbose in their original form. Email addresses are included when the authors give permission to do so.

If you'd like to respond to a letter whose author does not list an email, you can send your response to Anglicans Online and we'll forward it to the writer.

Letters from 28 April to 4 May 2008

Like all letters to the editor everywhere, these letters are the opinions of the writers and not Anglicans Online. We publish letters that we think will be of interest to our readers, whether we agree with them or not. If you'd like to write a letter of your own, click here.

Critical mass

Last Sunday my husband and I attended the Catholic Church. We were in the “inquiring” stage of becoming Roman Catholics. However, because each of us had divorce lurking in our history, we would not be allowed to join the Catholic Church or even participate in the Eucharist until we had undergone the Catholic annulment process with respect to our previous marriages. And annulment is not guaranteed.

When I learned this, I felt like a second-class citizen. The man in charge of our newcomers’ class at the Catholic Church told us not to worry because it had taken him three tries to be granted his annulment.

The Blood of Christ covers the pedophile but not the divorcée who has remarried?

I am very disappointed. What attracted me to the Catholic Church is the beauty and reverence of the mass.

So our spiritual journey continues. Now we are going to check into the Anglican Church.

Thank you for this site.

Julie Fonda
Still looking for a church
Los Angeles, California
28 April 2008

(Ed: We hope that you have found a good Episcopal church there in Los Angeles. You will find that the Episcopal worship service is quite similar to the Roman Catholic worship service, though both vary from parish to parish. The situation with respect to divorce and remarriage in the Roman Catholic church is more complex than you were told, but that probably no longer matters.)

Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.