May I thank you for two things in your issue of May 30?
First, your third leader with its fine and true words: "No Catholic can do other than reject Communism — and reject it without compromise. Cornmunism is the enemy of the God whose existence it denies."
Perhaps the most significant success scored by International Communism during the past ten years has been its sedulous fostering at all levels within the Church of a mentality which makes many of its members incapable now of offering effective mental resistance to Communism.
The feeling thereby created — of the inevitability of eventual Communist take-over — makes such a take-over the more likely, as Lenin. the strategist par excellence, knew so well. None would have rejoiced more than he at the presence within the contemporary Church, not only of the mentality just described, hut of that naive walking contradiction, the Christian/Marxist cleric.
Secondly, your generosity in publishing one centre-page article and several letters which reflect the growing disillusionment of so many Catholics with the content of contemporary liturgical "reform" and their rising anger at what can only he described as the high-handed manner of its enforcement.
What we have in the Church today, where the liturgy is concerned, is not democracy (which I have never favoured in Church affairs) but a brand of democratic centralism, which is rule by faceless members of committees and commissions over the heads of the faithful and in their presumed (as distinct from true) interests.
This system has prevailed in the Soviet Union for a good many years. It has been applied for some time now within the field of contemporary liturgical "reform." I wonder if those responsible realise how hateful the whole process has proved to so many. I doubt it.
My hope is that, maybe, some of them will come to realise it when they read your letters page. The implication is that you will continue to offer the hospitality of your columns to the liturgically oppressed. It is time, I think, that they had their say. They constitute, in my view, the Church's silent majority. Paul Crane, SJ Editor, Christian Order 65 Belgrave Road, London, SWI.