Sir, - Fr Pat Moore (February 11th) was so right to point out that in walking away from Christianity the Irish people could be walking away from their own souls and into T.S. Eliot's wasteland. We may well, as he says, be ashamed of our modern adventure when we compare the ESB offices in Fitzwilliam Street and Liberty Hall by the Liffey with Chartres Cathedral.
It is too little-known that each year at Pentecost 20,000 people - the overwhelming majority under 25 years of age - spend three days on a glorious counter-cultural adventure: walking from Notre-Dame de Paris to Chartres Cathedral on a pilgrimage of prayer and penance. The climax is a Solemn High Mass in Chartres Cathedral, in the old Latin rite. To accommodate as many pilgrims as possible, all the pews are taken out of the cathedral; even so, thousands have to remain outside. The former Irish soccer international Frank O'Farrell (who succeeded Matt Busby as manager of Manchester United) has described that High Mass as a bigger thrill than leading out Leicester City on Cup Final Day in 1969.
Yes, the living tradition of the Catholic Church can still feed the soul of modern man and woman more than adequately, if only our bishops will allow it to do so. - Yours, etc.,
From Nick Lowry
Villarea Park, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.