Your newspaper is to be praised for facilitating the publicity of people's views. In doing this, you would also conscientiously give space for the expression of views opposing ones you have published.
In consideration of this, I comment on Arthur Comer's opinion expressed (April 5) that the churches should not change their views just because society does, in particular with regard to same sex marriage.
This is not the same as society in general deciding that same sex marriages could exist. We live in a democracy and the will of the people prevails.
He, of course, is free to believe what he likes as long as such belief doesn't mean that his ideas of what God thinks, be it Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever, should be imposed on society if it thinks otherwise.
He implies that the church (Christian, one presumes) doesn't change in relation to changes in society.
Well, it does.
Some examples are: church authorities once very enthusiastically tortured and then burnt to death those they found to be "witches" and " heretics", they slaughtered entire populations whose ideas they abhorred. For example the Cathars, they were enthusiastic supporters of slavery for centuries (not officially condemned until 1839 by Pope Gregory XVI), eating meat on a Friday was pronounced a "mortal sin" .
It was considered acceptable for popes to behave like war lords. This is no longer tolerated. All these attitudes have changed as societies changed and the tolerances of those societies.
The list of vices Arthur mentions, as if they were new inventions, have all been popular pastimes for centuries, often practised with gusto by church members themselves, even the head of the Christian church, who claimed to be the one with the direct line to God. One only has to look at a history of the Papacy to see every single one of those vices cheerfully practised.
Indulgence in sexual misconduct, practised notoriously by various popes (Alexander Borgia the most famous), has persisted to the present.
As societies have changed their views, so has the church changed its practices and rules, along with its interpretation of rules.
JOAN C. RYAN
Ballarat Central