Madam, - There has been a very interesting correspondence under this heading - for me reaching its peak in the lengthy letter of January 11th from Prof Vincent Twomey.
It seems to me that when Fr Twomey refers to "authoritative Church teaching" he is talking of something quite different from the average sermon of a parish priest in (say) rural Co Wexford or Venezuela. The Catholic Church has over a billion members at various levels of sophistication and must, of necessity, aim its general teaching at the lowest common denominator.
I well remember that the sermons I heard from the Jesuits in Farm Street in the West End of London were light years away from the blood and thunder I had heard from the Redemptorists in Ferns in the 1940s.
Fr Sean Fagan (December 29th) was right to draw our attention to the statement of the then adviser to Vatican II, Joseph Ratzinger, about the supremacy of individual conscience. More recently, as Pope Benedict XVI in the foreword to his book Jesus of Nazareth, he uses the phrase: "Everyone is free. . . to contradict me" - surprising, perhaps, from one whose CV could include the word "infallible".
But if God has given us a brain with power to reason, why would he not expect us to value our conscience - provided, of course, that it is a well-informed conscience, that we are guided by those whom we believe best qualified to guide us, and that we obey the rules that were originally devised for the survival of the people of Moses in the desert - suitably interpreted, of course.
Some time ago, you carried an interesting correspondence on the Eucharist. This consisted of a discussion on whether the literal interpretation of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation distinguished it from the Protestant version.
You could have knocked me down with a feather when, a distinguished Catholic priest recently raised the question of priests who had officiated at several Masses (and therefore consumed a lot of Communion wine) being over the permitted alcohol limit for drivers. So, you see, it is all a matter of interpretation.
- Yours, etc,
W. J. MURPHY, Malahide, Co Dublin.
Madam, - The debate in your Letters page between Frs Twomey and Fagan is an interesting development for those of us who grew up under the burden of traditional Catholicism in Ireland. Two Catholic priests are debating openly and, in so doing, are providing an insight to the processes that shaped the repression we endured in the middle decades of the last century and which, in turn, I would venture, motivates many of the people who post on the website www.atheist.ie.
Fr Twomey points out that certain things that people were told by the church were never authoritative church teachings. They were promulgated by individual theologians and based on false assumptions. The tragedy, of course, is that throughout history that did not stop them having the power to dominate people's lives.
To hear now that they were "disputed questions" in the exalted realms of theology, knowing that they were beaten into children by their parents and local clergy, and held to be applicable to adults under the reprehensible psychological threat of eternal damnation, is more than a little hard to take.
Frs Twomey and Fagan are, of course, to be thanked for allowing the fresh air of public debate to blow about these issues. That one may feel it necessary to give thanks for this is a measure of the singularity of such a development among those who are, after all, officers in that bastion of obfuscation, the Catholic Church of Rome.
- Yours, etc,
SEAMUS McKENNA, Farrenboley Park, Windy Arbour, Dublin 14.