Madam, - I was delighted with your edition of July 2nd because it was good to see Jesus Christ on the centre pages. On the Letters page you had Seán Fagan firing yet another salvo at the Vatican with his bazooka from Leeson Street. This time he first damned Pope Benedict with some praise and then fired six rhetorical questions at him without drawing a breath.
On the opposite page you had Prof Philip Booth and Peter Nolan telling us that the gospels are a social manifesto but not a socialist manifesto; a neat distinction, I must say. But right alongside them, Brendan Butler was telling us that the gospels are indeed a socialist manifesto, aligning himself with Seán Fagan and Tony Flannery. I have to say that I don't agree with any of them.
To Seán Fagan I would say: Seán, like myself, you haven't much longer to go. Your reputation is already in tatters in the Vatican but is seen as the finest of fine linen throughout the world. Personally I have learned quite a lot from your two previous books on morality. At this point you have nothing to lose so why don't you write your own answers to your six questions and suffer the consequences?
To Philip Booth and Peter Nolan I would say: the gospels are not a social manifesto, and Jesus, if he had not died already, would have a heart attack to see his words reduced to that level.
To Brendan Butler I would say: Cut out the false humility. Of course, you know why the popes are opposed to liberation theology. They are opposed to it because the gospel is most certainly not meant to be presented as a socialist manifesto.
If Brendan still insists on his ignorance, all he has to do, and Tony Flannery likewise, is to study Pope Benedict's masterly book Jesus of Nazareth. There he explains in the most gentle way imaginable, without any polemics whatsoever, why he can never see the Gospels as social or socialist manifestoes. He bases his views on the temptations in the desert and the teaching of Jesus about the Kingdom of God and his Father. In doing so he calmly cuts right across a great deal of what passes as Christian spirituality today in many seminaries and institutes for spirituality, but which is really only half the story.
That book is going to be a classic and a blueprint for a complete modern spirituality, not the half-product we are making do with at the moment. - Yours, etc,
Fr MICHAEL GOLDEN, Danes Hill, Monksland, Co Roscommon.
Madam, - If I am walking down the street with you when we come upon a person in need, I have every right (and may even have a moral duty) to lighten my wallet to relieve his distress; I have no right whatsoever to lighten your wallet.
Karl Deering (July 9th), criticising Philip Booth's and Peter Nolan's defence of the market economy and their distinction between socialism and the social (Opinion & Analysis, July 3rd), appears unable to tell the difference between charity and coercion.
That a state of affairs is desirable does not necessarily imply that the coercive power of a state should be employed to bring it about. It is bizarre to find the gospels portrayed as blueprints for public policy. - Yours, etc,
GERARD CASEY, Ballinclea Heights, Killliney, Co Dublin.