Madam, - I keep reading references in your Letters columns to a phenomenon called "à la carte Catholicism".
This phrase is a derisory term used by blind-faith Catholic fundamentalists to attempt to belittle those Catholics like myself who use their God-given conscience (fully informed, of course) to regulate their Christian life and moral conduct.
I constantly tell my congregations that had Almighty God wanted us to be religious robots He would not have given us a brain and a conscience and we would have a little red flashing light at the place currently occupied by our belly-button. I would like to remind those who drone on about the "vicar of Christ" of the words of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who wrote: "Conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ". - Yours, etc,
Bishop PAT BUCKLEY, The Oratory Society, Larne, Co Antrim.
Madam, - By virtue of my upbringing and a long spell in a seminary, I am programmed at a fundamental level as a cultural Catholic. I am quite comfortable with that.
I've no wish to change. It is part of my identity. Belonging to a church is unlike being in a club or society or political party; and the argument that you should leave or go elsewhere, if dissatisfied or less than a full practising member, is spurious. Nowadays, I come to religion and a need for something spiritual in my life mainly through the uplifting experience of sacred music in the setting of the choral Mass.
As regards the official Church's opposition to so-called à la carte membership, it is a truism that Catholics from birth didn't have sight of the menu from which they might in the course of time and on reflection order! - Yours, etc,
OLIVER McGRANE, Marley Avenue, Dublin 16