Sir, - Vincent Browne (Opinion, October 11th), offensively accused Jesus Christ of "moral blindness" for allegedly condoning slavery.
As not everything that Christ taught was recorded, who knows whether He did condemn slavery or not? Anyhow, He was preaching the Kingdom of God, not a social reform agenda. If He spoke against every social evil in the Graeco-Roman world, He would have done little else.
Slavery does not appear to have been a great problem among the Jews of the day. The masters' obligations to the slaves were stringent and they had to free them on a jubilee year.
Has Vincent Browne himself no moral blindness? I have not heard him decry the evils of abortion or euthanasia which take life and are morally more repugnant than slavery. Nor have I heard him criticise the in-vitro fertilisation industry (e.g. the recent Nash case) which reduces human beings to expendable commodities, killed or spared for the use and pleasure of others. Indeed that practice is not philosophically much different from slavery in its worst manifestation. - Yours, etc.,
E. O Raghallaigh,
Mapas Road,
Dalkey,
Co Dublin.