Madam, - Those who have made a multi-million euro industry out of people's insecurity and gullibility are understandably worried and angered by Archbishop Brady's challenge to their wares - as Clive Dunne's character in Dad's Army used to say: "They don't like it up 'em, no they don't!"
Other non-religious commentators have already expressed concern about the growth of these quasi-supernatural salespeople. Comparing this kind of astral travelling with aspects of religious faith which has proved a bulwark of reason against such twaddle since the time King Saul was told not to consult the witches of Endor and which has bequeathed us whatever vestiges of civilisation we have only demonstrates the silliness or slyness of their arguments.
The archbishop is merely doing what any moral leader worth his salt should do and pointing people towards God-given reality and reason and away from superstition and manipulation.
Even Shakespeare, a man of an even more gullible time than our own observed: "The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves." But as GK Chesterton once remarked: "Those who cease to believe in God soon believe in anything." - Yours, etc,
Fr PAUL CLAYTON-LEA, Termonfeckin, Co Louth.