Sir, - I love to "collect" churches and therefore attend Mass all around the city and country. What I see often appals me. Beautiful altars and altar rails, which in many churches were built with the famine pennies of the starving Irish, are discarded without a thought. Large sums of money were given to the clergy to build belfries and to buy bells, yet now we listen to recordings of bells being broadcast to signal services.
Churches were provided with organs, yet we must endure rasping guitars. We used to buy candles which we lit before some altars; now we put money in a slot to light an electric bulb in honour of God. The sanctuary behind the now-forgotten altar rails is no longer a sanctuary, but is open space for all. The Communion Host is too often contaminated by the perfume used by the Minister of the Eucharist.
The latest and ghastliest innovation is the introduction of "music while you pray", played over the public address system - probably to show that if the supermarket can do it, so can we. God be with the days when there was dignity in churches. In the words of the late John Healy, "no one shouted stop". - Yours, etc.,
Dermot C. Clarke, Wilson Road, Mount Merrion, Co Dublin.