Catholics share in responsibility

I'll follow Walter Frank's contention that Catholics in the pews are not to blame for the behavior of aberrant priests (April 9) by asking him, first, if he thinks the German people as a whole were innocent of the acts of Hitler in his attempt to rid the world of our Jewish brothers.

If we are Catholics, we swallow the Catechism; when one falls, we all fall. We are responsible for and guilty of Catholic priest-abuse because we erroneously reason that because our brother is a priest, he can do no wrong.

Mr. Frank may claim, "We have no voice in the church; how can we be guilty?" That's true; it's a shepherd/sheep institution.

But Vatican II over 30 years ago pronounced that we are a priestly people who have a voice in our church. Yet you sit back innocently in the pew and resent criticism?

Monica L. Zabor

Arlington Heights