Sir, - What Rev David O'Hanlon (July 1st) possesses in modern day Catholic wisdom he lacks in historical sense: to talk of "2000 years of Catholic witness" is to use a denominational term which was simply inapplicable 2000 years ago. One can no more talk of 2000 years of Catholic witness than one can refer to 2000 years of Protestant witness: the early church was catholic. It was not, however, Catholic, which is a modern denominational term involving certain presuppositions which simply did not apply at the time of Christian origins.
Contrary to what Rev O'Hanlon clearly thinks, there was no precedent in the early church (which was, in any case, by no means the centrally organised institution the Catholic church is today) for celibacy, simply the wildly disparate opinions of various groupings within it, of which the Bishop of Rome was simply one party. "Papal" authority was not the same for the early Christians as it is for modern day Catholics. - Yours, etc., James Dowling,
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.