WCR Letters to the Editor

Dirty oil stains many global drilling pictures

This is in response to the letter to the editor (“Oil is not just dirty, but it is bloody,” WCR letters, May 11), wherein the writer charges that “tar sands oil is dirty” and so shouldn’t be recovered, and that the Bush administration used deception to justify the Iraq war, resulting in the deaths of many innocent people, simply for the purpose of getting cheap “bloody oil.” Three points.

First, as a chemical engineer, I can’t think of any examples of “clean oil” occurring naturally. On the contrary, oil, coal or tarsands processing is meant to clean the oil so that it can be used in such a way as to be least harmful to the environment.

If anyone is to be blamed for contaminating the earth with “dirty oil,” I suggest you look at Russia, where millions of barrels of oil annually spill out over the countryside because of the shoddy condition of its pipelines; or at Kuwait, following the first Iraq war, when Saddam Hussein deliberately set the Kuwaiti oilfields on fire.

It has been the American public’s demand for cheap oil and its steadfast refusal to use its own abundant oil supply, which forced the Bush administration to seek out foreign sources of oil.

Second, while war inevitably results in the deaths of many innocents, in Iraq, prior to the war, Saddam Hussein brutally murdered 30,000 of his own people annually. Third, for Americans to declare that Alberta’s tarsands oil is “dirty” and therefore shouldn’t be used, is hypocritical in the extreme. What Albertans are doing is purifying the tarsands oil, so the Americans can be assured of having an abundant, dependable and cheap oil supply.

Ron Rosmer
Hinton

New songs, new tunes, new PowerPoint muffles the congregants

In a recent article (“Liturgical music must reflect singers’ hearts,” WCR, April 6), Marty Haugen is quoted as saying, “The primary musical voice at the Eucharist celebration is the assembly, not the choir or the soloist. The congregation is doing the proclaiming of the word in song and they must feel an ownership of it.”

This article was timely as in my church, the reverse has happened. Recently, two huge projector screens have been hung, one on either side of the altar, and now the text for each hymn is projected, using PowerPoint.

From an “ownership” perspective, we are now at the mercy of the person who has put the text onto the computer.

The words don’t appear as they do in the hymnals, line by line like a poem, but appear according to how many words fit on the screen.

I love to sing and enjoy music that “reflect(s) and (is) consistent with, the Scripture that is being proclaimed.” Now, the hymns are neither posted on the hymn boards nor announced. (I have asked if they could do either option.)

Our leaders of song are using many new tunes which are difficult to learn, as we no longer have the option of following the music. If this is an attempt to engage those who don’t sing, I do not believe it will work. The silent remain so.

Those who wish to be a part of the singing are perfectly capable of finding hymn numbers, but we have been denied ownership in this once joyful part of the Mass.

Sally Carline
Edmonton

Letters to the Editor

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