Sir, - I write with particular reference to your cartoonist Martyn Turner's cartoon of July 25th, and with a more general reference to various people who, from time to time, complain about displays of religious objects, in Catholic schools, the payment of Catholic chaplains in community schools, the ringing of church bells, etc.
If my interpretation of Mr Turner's cartoon is correct, he apparently considers that playing the Angelus on RTE is, in effect, analogous to a Catholic's being refused an ordinary secular job in an ordinary secular workplace in Northern Ireland because of his religion. (Mr Turner may, of course, be blessed with insights into the finer points of sectarianism that this writer totally lacks.)
In the more general matters of objection to displays of religious objects in Catholic schools, etc., would it be showing excessive cynicism to ask if some of the people who make these complaints are motivated not so much by a passionate love of the Constitution or a disinterested zeal for the correct observance of legal requirements, or anti sectarianism, or regard for the environment, or whatever, but by a deep seated antagonism to religion and to the Catholic Church in particular, which they would like to see banished to some modern equivalent of the catacombs, out of hearing, out of sight and out off mind? - Yours, etc.,
Castletown,
Athboy,
Co Meath.