Sir, - "Hurt" is the major problem of our age, if one is to believe some of the comments we read on this page. Other nations struggle with earthquakes, famine and disease, and we in Ireland peer at our navels and get upset if anyone dares to really express their true opinion on a whole variety of issues now deemed to be sensitive. Mo Mowlam reminded Ian Paisley in a Northern Ireland Assembly debate that no one has a monopoly on hurt. Those words should be on the top of this page every day, and prominently displayed in every counselling centre in the land.
I am surprised, but not hurt (I am probably in denial), at the recent vitriol directed at Cardinal Connell by a coalition of The Irish Times, The Church of Ireland and assorted hurting Catholics. On television last week an Anglican Bishop referred to the cardinal as a "conservative reactionary", which he denied was an insult! It is a curious characteristic of Dr Connell's critics that they attack his perceived insensitivity in tones of shrill outrage and horror. I detect a sad lack of normal common courtesy, not to mention the absence of Christian charity in many of the harsh words uttered by Dr Connell's detractors.
I find it hard to listen to Anglican divines pontificating to the Cardinal. They preside over a Church which denounces praying for the dead and the invocation of the saints as "repugnant to the word of God". The Catholic Mass is, in official traditional Anglican teaching, a "blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit". Of course those of us who watched the consistory from Rome will remember seeing the anti-Christ put the red hat on Dr Connell's head. When these lies are formally repudiated by the Anglican Communion, maybe then will their complaints carry credibility.
Personally I cannot comprehend how any educated Catholic could logically enter into communion with any body which is so explicitly opposed to key Catholic beliefs. In conscience I could only receive Communion in a Church of Ireland Church by denying my faith. At the crux of this issue is a sincere difference in belief. The common cliche that all religions are the same is simply wrong. Irish Catholics were persecuted by the state because they refused to take communion in the Established Church in the past. We used to admire their faith in pre-ecumenical times; in certain Catholic quarters they, like so many things, are now an embarrassment. The present establishment lambastes our new Cardinal. Has anything changed? - Yours, etc.,
Father Columba Nee, Donegal Road, Ballybofey, Co Donegal.