Madam, - I commend Sean Alexander Smith's spirited defence (April 16th) of the supposedly beleaguered Pope Benedict over his remarks on hell. In the context, however, I wonder about the appropriateness of even his tongue-in-cheek suggestion "that the whole concept belongs to hocus-pocus Catholicism in Sister Assumpta's religion class, circa 1950".
This, in fact, is the only Catholicism there is. "Hocus-pocus" is a derogatory 16th-century anti-Catholic neologism intended as a mockery of "hoc est enim corpus meum" ("For this is My Body"). We Catholics still proclaim it as "the mystery of faith". The ever popular and apparently innocent Hokey-Pokey is a further spin-off from the bitter polemics of that less ecumenical age. How else to explain the bizarre dance-floor gestures and antics of even the most sober of us at the family wedding? - Yours, etc,
BERNARD J. McGUCKIAN SJ, North Circular Road, Dublin 7.