Sir, - As a Catholic and parent who now strongly suspects that the clergy's obsession with sex is directly related to clerical celibacy, could I suggest an opinion poll to investigate whether this belief is shared by many others? My own sad conviction is that the clergy have invested so much of their moral authority in this area that the effects of a series of sexual scandals involving clergy since 1992 has been devastating to its authority generally. (It is increasingly scandalous and inexplicable that the hierarchy has given absolutely no attention to assessing this damage, and that we must rely on opinion polls to tell us.)
If the seven deadly sins all have equal status in the clergy's eyes, why do their writings on lust far outweigh the attention given to all of the other six? Can Father Campbell (December 27th) tell us how many sumptuously illustrated cookery books ever made it on to the Roman Index as an incitement to gluttony, for example? How many encyclicals and Irish pastoral letters have dealt with the subject of sloth?
In the anti abortion campaign, how much time has been spent assessing its contribution to the deadly sin of anger - on both sides of the argument? (If I remember correctly, that anger has occasionally boiled over into murder.) As pride is not confined to the sexually active, how many clerical retreats have given significant time to it?
To restore the ground that has been lost, and to restore in particular some credibility to the antiabortion crusade, the next Pope will need to be (a) married, and (b) female. As ordination is not essential for papal election, there can be no doctrinal obstacle here. How about a poll on this as well? - Yours, etc.,
2 Greenhill Road,
Coleraine BT51 3JE.