There was recently a letter to the editor responding to my father’s commentary on “The Three Main Faults of Religion.” I lack the space to address all the author’s points, but I can respond to one in particular.

The author denied that religious belief tends to exacerbate feelings among believers that make them view nonbelievers as suspect and immoral. He then mentioned Pope Francis as an example.

But although Francis is hailed as a liberal pope in the media, he is a deeply religious man whose supernatural beliefs enforce paranoia regarding nonbelievers — or more specifically, regarding the ethics of people who do not believe in Church doctrine.

Consider the pope’s remarks earlier this month where he denounced efforts to legalize gay marriage. These comments clearly express distrust of non- Catholic views:

“The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life… These realities are increasingly under attack from powerful forces, which threaten to disfigure God’s plan for creation.”

And in 2010 before becoming pope, Francis’s native Argentina was debating a bill that would legalize gay marriage and adoption. He wrote the following comments about it:

“[T]he Argentine people will face a situation whose outcome can seriously harm the family… At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother and children. At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God. At stake is the total rejection of God’s law engraved in our hearts.”

He then claimed the bill was a move “by the Father of Lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.” Such language asserts that people who support LGBT equality are being guided by an evil demonic being.

Pope Francis is thus an example of how religion can increase distrust and opposition to moral progress.

Aaron Fogg
Topsham