To the editor of the St. Albert Gazette:
I'm very disappointed in your tongue-in-cheek, flippant offering on the Opinion page of the Gazette’s Wednesday, Oct. 1 edition, titled "Commentary."
I will make an assumption here that you are "just trying to promote a lively exchange of ideas in our community." However, you have certainly missed the mark and, I would suggest, done considerable damage to your reputation as an editor, at least as far as your Catholic readership is concerned.
On the Gazette's website page containing the Newsroom Bios it is stated that you are: "a strong believer in community service” and that your pastimes include "pulp fiction." I question the former, but have evidence of the latter. From my perspective, you have done a disservice to St. Albert's Catholic community in your so-called commentary; and you have passed along a lot of dribble that you have decided to use to poke fun at our faith.
May I suggest that you take a tip from ISWNE (The International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors) Volume 37, No. 3 April 2012. There you contributed a reasonable article on March 27, 2012 – whilst editor of The Mountaineer (Rocky Mountain House, Alberta). In that periodical, under the heading: Letters can invigorate editorial page, Jim Pumarlo laid out a reasoned approach to how editors can promote a lively exchange of ideas in our community. In particular, I draw your attention to this principle: "Stick to public issues: Letters should address public issues or issues that come before public bodies. Compliments and/or criticism of private organizations and businesses are not regular subjects for letters."
I believe that having an editor poke fun at the Catholic faith – in this case by highlighting the many errors that are evident in the so-called "faithful" today, crosses that line.
Therefore, I refer you to another article, this one taken from Grass Roots: Volume 52, no.4 winter 2011: Everyone makes mistakes, said Stu Salkeld, editor of The Mountaineer in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada. "It's not a question of whether you make them, it's how you handle them," Salkeld said. "Behave professionally and take responsibility for what you have done."
As Christians, we are encouraged to pray for those who wrong us, and I will do that for you. However, I would not want this blatant instance of satire directed against a large segment of your readership to go unchallenged. Your Catholic readers deserve an apology.
Fred Holtslag, St. Albert
