I frowned after reading J.P. Devine’s column “Summer Pepsi nights” on July 8.

In it he recounted the nostalgic summer days of his youth when he and his friends would steal a couple sodas from a beverage truck: “We could have taken a whole wooden case, but we weren’t thieves, and we always confessed it on Saturday. The Blessed Mother loves drunks and cola drinkers.”

I assume this was written in jest, but I caution Devine, because these lines are quite scandalous, in that they discredit a religion by a supposedly religious person (assuming he is a Catholic).

The offhand and irreverent tone Devine uses when commenting about his misunderstanding and misuse of one of the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, and his “joke” about as important a figure as Notre Dame, the Blessed Virgin Mary, bring discredit to the church as a whole.

Maybe his goal was only to entertain, but this isn’t the first time. Devine tried to raise more laughs at the expense of the Catholic Church in his column titled “A Baptism for Brody.” Maybe he thought the jokes were funny, but I was not pleased with what I perceived as a mockery of my religion.

I sincerely ask Devine to stop making jokes about the Catholic Church. They are not appropriate, they are not funny, and they do not teach the world the truth about the beauty and grace found by many, including myself, in the Catholic Church.

As my mother often said to me growing up, “If you have nothing good to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.”

Matthew Howard

Skowhegan