Sir, - I would like to say a word or two, not so much in defence of Fintan O'Toole (he is more than capable of defending himself), as in agreement with both the tone and content of his recent column on the Dana presidential campaign.
Those who accuse him of being "sneeringly" anti-Catholic have, in my view, totally missed the point of his article. You can only logically accuse him of being anti-Catholic if you indentify Catholicism with the kind of fundamentalist displays that accompany the present Pope on his world tours or with the kind of personal worship of the Pope that Dana herself portrays in her feel-good songs such as Totus Tuus ("Totally Yours") of a few years back.
Many people, including myself, have become increasingly distressed and alienated by this image of our Church and indeed by the bunker mentality very often portrayed by those who ought to be in the vanguard of critical thinking about the role of the Church in the modern world.
Fintan O'Toole has the happy knack of saying what a lot of us think about the present parlous state of what we once were proud to be part of. He is right to point out that there now seems to be very little room for or tolerance of critical thinking and debate in the Church. This situation is a far cry from the heady pre- and post-Vatican II days when such debate and thinking were actively encouraged.
Those who dare raise their voices in questioning whether being a Catholic is not something more than being a passive spectator at the cult of personality do so at their peril (witness the tone of the adverse comments about Mr O'Toole's article in the Letters columns of your paper, as well as the hounding of such theologians as Leonardo Boff and others over the past few decades). The situation has reached such a crisis point that there is now a parallel Church springing up in many places made up of people who have just simply given up on the old structures, who find them quite simply incredible.
Fintan O'Toole is right when he says that the old Church is dying and that what we are witnessing in the Dana spectacle is a last desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable. The question I and many others are asking is: What is there to fill the gap that will be left? - Yours, etc.,
Leixlip, Co Kildare.