DAVID GRANT,
Sir, - Father David O'Hanlon has added his pinch of silly seasoning to the thymes that are in it.
His tetchy strictures on the gentle aspirations toward unity expressed, on retiring, by Archbishop Walton Empey (August 1st) have a more than passing resonance to the deplorable sneer made some time back by his own ecclesiastical superior regarding Dr Empey's theological expertise.
When both David O'Hanlon and his cardinal shall come to retire, I hope they may be held in the kind of love and regard which Walton Empey enjoys and which he has merited by his shining Christian ministry over the years.
Dr Empey's pained disappointment at the reiteration of sterile and self-righteous exclusivity featured in that "internal memorandum for Catholics, Dominus Iesus" - and cited by David O'Hanlon - is echoed by the few who may have read it, and regarded with indifference by the many who haven't, but deem such views to be little more than hoary canards wheeled out by time-warped and fossilised obscurantists of the Roman Curia.
After all, Jesus wasn't a Roman Catholic, but he did instigate a great reformation in his day. Is not another such renewal urgently overdue? - Yours, etc.,
DAVID GRANT, Mount Pleasant, Waterford.