The real issue is that the collective letter, although no doubt offered in good faith by its signatories, is shot through with selective ideological blindness. It is, I am sorry to say, a sectarian document cast as an appeal to high principle.

Though laetare might look like an infinitive form, laetor is a deponent verb, which means that laetare is actually a command: rejoice! That’s what the medieval Church tells them to do on this dark, heavy day in the middle of Lent: Rejoice, O Jerusalem, all you who love her, gather as one and rejoice with joy, you who have been in sorrow.