IN HIS own words, as quoted on the front page of the Sept. 3 Globe, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley told how at Mission Church, immediately prior to presiding at Senator Kennedy’s funeral, he instructed President Obama as to the stance of the American bishops regarding any plan for universal health care.
In our age when we are hard pressed to find sacred space within which to meditate and reflect, there is nothing like watching the Catholic cardinal and archbishop of Boston secularize that space by walking into the face of the president with a subject that is singularly sacred to him.
Wrong place. Wrong time.
David F. Noonan
Cambridge
LET ME see if I understand correctly what Cardinal O’Malley said to President Obama at Senator Kennedy’s funeral. If I read it right, he said, in effect, that the Catholic Church would support universal health care if it is permitted to impose its religious beliefs (i.e., by restricting access to abortion) on the American people.
The only appropriate response to the cardinal is, as Sarah Palin famously put it in another context: Thanks, but no thanks.
Leo J. Cotnoir
Manchester, N.H. 
