Church has right to regulate own affairs

Your editorial (Apr 7) was an ill-informed, exaggerated and unjustified attack on the right of the Magesterium of the Catholic Church to regulate its own affairs.

If an official of a Government department, or an employee of a commercial operation made statements and recommended action at variance with the policies of either, they would be silenced or dismissed in short order. Yet your anonymous editorial writer demands that matters should be different in the Catholic Church.

He also dishonestly alleges that “dissent in the Church ... elicits a mailed fist reaction from the Vatican.”