To the Journal editor:

During my family’s years at St. Michael’s Church, we were always told the “Church” is the people. If that is the truth, has Bishop Doerfler and Father Van Damme spoken for the parishioners regarding the exclusion and shunning of Mr. Brown?

Is it possible that St. Michaels is planning an expansion of the vestibule to accomodate those who have to join Mr. Brown in Sunday morning worship? Let’s see, there needs to be room for people using artificial birth control, people who are divorced but haven’t “paid” for annulments for their marriages with children, people who have used sterlization as a birth control method (which includes me after five children – yikes!) and people who are having sex outside of marriage, to name a few.

Mr. Brown’s painful experience reminds me of 1949 when I was baptized Catholic, and the priest did not allow my mother to be present because she was Lutheran. Visualize the door closed and a new mother sitting in the waiting area all alone without her baby. Needless to say, my father never attended church while I was growing up.

So, members of St. Michael’s Parish, what are you going to do? Sit back and do nothing? In the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

“If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutraility.”

Carole Poggi

Marquette