Sir, - Angela MacNamara asks (August 20th): "Who is teaching the responsibility that comes with moral freedom?" I can supply the answer in one word: nobody! Parents won't, churches don't and schools daren't. (Although, when things go wrong, the question always asked is, "What are the schools doing?")
This is the era of youth idolisation and everyone must court approval from the young. No restrictions of language or behaviour must be imposed on "our young people". Rather, everything they do or say must be universally applauded, and they must be provided with everything to shelter them from that great fatal malaise known to them as boredom.
Meanwhile, they learn to appreciate nothing and have no respect for anything or anyone (including themselves). I shudder to think what the offspring of these young people will be like. Perhaps they will self-destruct.
Let us take heart from the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. - Is mise,
C.M. Butler, Newry, Co Down.