Dear Abbot, First, allow me to introduce myself. I am a staunch Catholic.

I hear mass on Sunday, I pray every day, I participate in the liturgical preparations of my parish. For the latter, I am part of the parish council. I go on a retreat at least once a year. I try to be available to those who need me. I am married. I have 6 children, one of whom is adopted, and 4 grandchildren (by the end of 2013 there will be 7 of them). I taught math and Catholic religion classes for 36 years in a secondary school. I was and am involved in so many Christian movements that it would be too long to list them all here. If I tell you all of this, it is certainly not to boast or to satisfy you, but simply to show you the kind of Christian I am. I do not know you well, obviously. I know that you are very active on Twitter. But when I ask you questions on this same Twitter, I receive no reply. So Im going to use the possibility of exceeding 140 characters to speak with you at greater length. It seems that you find it quite normal that the Church should intervene in the question of gay marriage which in fact does not concern the Church. For the Catholic church, there can be no marriage between two people of the same sex. And I agree with that. But by what right would you prevent two non-Catholics of the same sex from marrying? You exceed the limits of your role, overcome by a hypothetical French spring where Catholics play a preponderant role. So you begin by criticizing GUD, the FN, Civitas, the Groupe Identitaire, knowing all the while that without them, we would hear much less about you. Theyre good for swelling the number of protesters, but bad when its a question of vandalism. Would you call that Christian? Moreover you are outraged by the 293 arrests that involve only members of those groups. You want to preserve what you condemn. Is that right? Since, according to you, there were 1 million demonstrators, the arrests involved only 0.0293% of these demonstrators. You must admit that this is frankly very little if one were to draw a comparison, as you do, with the Trocadero arrests. You already see yourself in a renewed, ardent, victorious Christianitybut dear Father, this is not what Christ asks of you. Christianity is no longer what it was. Because, quite simply, non-Christians have rights too. We can practice our faith in the bosom of society. We can even, through our witness, more than our words, attempt to evangelize, over and over. But we do not have the right to manage society and we will never have that right again. You must come to terms with that. Or, like me, see it as a blessing because in a democratic society the rights of Christians are respected. Let us come to your arguments against gay marriage for non-Catholics. You say that the foundations of society itself will be altered, that it will open the doors to all sorts of abuses, and you name them: polygamy, zoophilia, consanguineous marriagesPlease listen: here in Belgium, homosexuals have been able to marry for 10 years. Come and see, read the Belgian press, immerse yourself among the Belgians. None of these abuses are rearing their heads. Those are just fantasies. And if such abuses should become reality one day, gay marriage will be no more responsible for it than all the other components of society. You wish at all costs to portray homosexuals as the ideal scapegoat. In other words, you condemn them in advance: you are imputing motives to them. And that, dear Father, is not Christian at all. It is that kind of trial that Jesus Christ was subjected to. Do you not agree that this is the basis for a Christian life? Just imagine if people said that a priests ordination encouraged pedophilia!!! You also have plenty to say about the children of these same-sex couples. You proudly declare that they would certainly not be truly happy, that they would lack what is needed to achieve happiness, and so on. There too you are looking for a scapegoat. Because there are tons of unhappy children right now. Its a teacher telling you that. And they come from all sorts of families: nuclear families, single-parent families, blended familiesnot a single type of family is immune from this tragedy. And I tell you this clearly: a gay couple will provide a guarantee that other types of families can never fully provide, that of wanting to love a child. A same-sex couple must adopt to have a child. I myself went through the entire obstacle course involved in adopting our young daughter from Haiti. We were interviewed several times, we had our psychological profiles drawn up and our socio-cultural profile as well. That is what same-sex couples will have to go through to adopt. And, like other applicants who wish to adopt, some will be turned away. This is never the case for biological children. Advancing your arguments is nothing short of hypocrisy, Father. You are riding on the wave of but where are we heading? But we are already in that where!

To make myself understood better, I am going to draw a comparison with divorce. I already did with my tweets, but you never replied. As you well know, Christian divorce does not exist. But divorce leaves in its wake all sorts of visible damage. There are sometimes children who are wounded for life by their parents divorce. There are teenagers who sometimes kill themselves over that. When are you going to take to the streets to defend these children???? Never! So why do you do it for the future, hypothetically unhappy children of same-sex couples??? Your arguments do not hold water, Father. And you are drawing many Christians along the path of unreason! Let me give you yet another example of how your positions are unfounded. You say A daddy, a mommy for each child. Must I remind you of the multitudes of little orphan girls brought up in convents? Theses children did not have a daddy and had seven or eight mommies. The church itself organized these polygamous and single-parent families. Now, fortunately, a same-sex couple who wishes to have a child to love, can take one out of an orphanage in the Third World and that is a good thing. Father, you have much work to do among Christians. Do not seek to impose your law elsewhere. Go to the aid of couples in distress, of unloved children, visit separated Christian couples, help the adolescents estranged from their parents because they are gay. Speak with gays (you do not need to go far: Professor Van Meerbeeck, a doctor, neuropsychiatrist and psychoanalyst, professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, has stated on Belgian television that 70% of priests, give or take, might be gay) Do good to those who trust in you. Do not hinder non-Christians from seeking happiness. I think that if this is the Gospel that you spread, it would be much more beautiful in their eyes. To end this letter, I invite you to read this short passage from the Bible offered in todays Vespers: 1 John 3:17-18 But if anyone has the worlds goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does Gods love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (A wink from he who loves us infinitely). Thierry Peltier PS: Dear readers, if you like this post, please share it. I keep getting the impression of being alone in expressing my view. (Translation: Emily Divinagracia)