Sir, - D. J. O'Gorman (August 5th) has a fair point about priests wearing clerical garb although I do not fully agree with it, but he (?) demolishes his argument in the last paragraph. I am one of his "half-baked idiots" who wears a collar and tie and I certainly do not feel any less special than any priest, brother, or nun.
What I am is a practising Roman Catholic in his sixties still struggling to make sense of this life and finding that the Church, for all its imperfections and misdemeanours, has a core message that helps me. I sympathise with the church authorities, who are losing religious in increasing numbers and gaining few new ones. Any measure, even such a trivial one as relaxing rules about clerical uniform, is to be welcomed if it helps to preserve the Christian message. - Yours, etc.,
David Berkeley,
St Domnach's Well,
Sutton,
Dublin 13.