Regarding “Reconsider,” April 15, Page 23

I read with appreciation a response from the Oregon coast to my report on what was discussed at my parish’s synod meeting.

Perhaps the best thing about the synod meetings held in parishes around the world was the exchange of ideas and discovery of the conflicting ideas within our community.

Acrimony toward homosexuals is so deep. In China and Russia, they still round up and kill homosexuals. Vladimir Putin called for their extermination only last year. He is certainly not my Christian role model. After World War II, as Jews were freed from concentration camps, homosexuals held in the very same camps were imprisoned for 10 more years. In England, courts of law ordered castration as a punishment and cure for homosexuals into the 1960s. This hatred is strong.

Women, who only received the right to vote in my grandparents’ day, are kept down in industry, education and in our church. They are brilliant. Try to run a parish or a Conference of Bishops without women. Men may think they are including women by allowing them to be subservient and out of leadership positions, but that is wrong. Things change and today women are prime ministers and CEOs, judges and the head of the Federal Reserve. Certainly, they are capable to do more in our Catholic Church.

I pray for my new coastal friend.

Tom Markgraf

North Portland