DESMOND WILSON,
Sir, - Paul Corcoran's remark - "The desire to be celibate is a characteristic worthy of psychiatric examination" - was quite vicious (July 25th). So he believes all those thousands of men and women who deliberately gave up the possibility of marriage for themselves in order to look after members of their own families in sickness and old age are mentally unbalanced?
He need not lament that women are "second-class members of the Church" as long as there are people like him around to put them in their unbalanced place even when they are at their most generous.
Most of the people who make that sacrifice of doing without marriage themselves for the sake of others are not in religious orders at all, or under any other church orders. And many of them are women. Priests make up a very small percentage of celibate people.
When Mr Corcoran gets his way and compulsory celibacy is abolished, will he keep on saying that those who are still voluntarily unmarried for the sake of others' well-being are mad?
There are good arguments to put forward about celibacy. Mr Corcoran's are not among them; and while the Church may well survive the celibacy rule it will hardly survive the callousness of those who pretend not to notice the generosity of others or the reasons for it. - Yours, etc.,
DESMOND WILSON, Springhill Close, Belfast 12.