DYMPNA UI RIAIN,
Sir, - The women of Linz have great courage, courage akin to that of the women who stood by Christ in His final hour.
I would request your readership, women and men, to withhold their comments until they have read Women and Christianity, a trilogy by Mary T Malone, historian and theologian. Then they will know how women have been insulted, abused, persecuted, tortured and burnt by the male-dominated clerical Church from the beginning of Christianity in spite of the mutual respect between Jesus and the women of the Gospels.
De facto, the patriarchal Church has ignored Christ's teaching and, to quote Mary T Malone, "one is forced to conclude that the resultant Christian story and the resultant body of teaching is therefore partial, distorted and unfaithful to the totality of the message left by Jesus."
Tradition must change. - Yours, etc.,
DYMPNA UÍ RIAIN,
Booterstown,
Co Dublin.