Sir, – Pope Francis has lamented the decline in Irish vocations to the Catholic priesthood. Nonetheless, though it may be scant consolation to him, we are still well-supplied with moralisers and sermonisers to flay and evangelise us on both personal and societal levels.
However, these days the pulpits they occupy are in the media and the public health system. And there’s another difference: under the old dispensation people boasted of boozing, and sex was the great occasion of sin. Nowadays, if the pieties of commentators and temperance advocates are anything to go by, it’s the other way around! – Yours, etc,
Dr DERMOT STOKES,
Donnybrook,
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Dublin 4.