Madam, - Your Religious Affairs Correspondent, Patsy McGarry, suggests that the "Primates kicked for touch" in their comments on the eucharistic celebration in Drogheda (Opinion & Analysis, April 20th). Mr McGarry himself kicks a journalistic Garryowen as he offers no comment, not even a sporting analogy, on the refusal of Presbyterian Moderator Dr Harry Uprichard to walk on the same sanctuary as a Roman Catholic priest.
Your Editorial of April 21st calls for more "prophehtic gestures of defiance", apparently to overcome restrictions on ecumenical exchanges. In your present ecumenical mood I wait to see Roman Catholic Notes appear alongside Church of Ireland Notes and Methodist and Presbyterian Notes in The Irish Times - or are you so caught by tradition you find it impossible to swallow the advice you so freely give to others?
Is it not time to move from your somewhat narrow denominational focus towards a more inclusive column which could embrace all strands of religious beliefs within our emerging multi-faith society?
Luke 42 might be worth pondering prior to the next meeting of your editorial board. - Yours, etc,
Fr DECLAN MORIARTY PP, Parish of Rowlagh and Quarryvale, Wheatfields Close, Dublin 22.
Madam, - Apropos the present spate of letters on the Easter mass in Drogheda, I have noticed over many years that on occasions where their absolute monopoly on decisions over matters theological or liturgical seems threatened, members of the Catholic Hierarchy speaking through the media use the term "the Church" as being synonomous with "the Hierarchy".
On other occasions where no such challenge is apparent they are quite prepared to concede that "the Church" is "the people of God".
As usual Shakespeare has words for it: ". . ..but man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, . . plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep. . ." - Yours, etc,
TONY BURKE, Abbey Park, Dublin 13.