Letter: Catholics and the facts of life

PAUL EMERY makes an elementary logical error (Letters, 12 June): to criticise the Pope for making rules about sexual behaviour is not comparable with saying that muggers, thieves etc should be in charge of the criminal law. Mugging and theft are, by their very nature, evil. What the Catholic Church seems incapable of understanding, although the rest of humanity realised it many hundreds of years ago, is that sexual intercourse is not inherently wicked. There is no authority, biblical or otherwise, for this absurd notion, nor for the related idiocy which asserts that sex can only properly take place for procreation. The Earth is not flat, the sun does not revolve around it and sex is not a sin. Until the Catholic Church accepts these simple facts it will continue to cause untold misery to millions of people who have been brought up to have some sympathy for its cruel and archaic doctrines.

Dr Roger A Fisken

Bedale, North Yorkshire