To the editors:
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In response to my letter [March 13] Jane Ellingwood [Letters, April 3] says that Christians are those who follow Christ and his teaching. True enough, but my letter dealt with the question of who are Catholics? In point of fact, they are those Christians in communion with Christ’s Vicar in Rome. Many people have trouble with this, but we live in a free country and if they don’t like what the Pope says they are free to protest and become Protestants.
As for vocations, in calling Peter and the 12, Christ created the vocation of bishop. The idea that somehow this vocation was “not THEN open to them,” is a logical nonsequitur. Further, we may be certain that Christ called them because he did so empirically, in the flesh as it were. Just as we may be certain that Christ is not calling women today, because Christ’s Vicar, the successor to Peter upon whom Christ built his Church, teaches us otherwise. “Sincerity” is no more proof of a genuine calling than hypochondria is proof of genuine illness.
