GIVE A man enough rope? Look, it is no use any contributor coming in here looking for rope for the next few months. The house manager (Richie) handed over the year's entire supply to Father David O'Hanlon of the Irish College in Rome a few weeks back and he has made damn good use of it.

He has been back for more all the same, as anyone who reads the letters page will know.

Many people have been asking me about the style of writing favoured by Father O'Hanlon in his letters and other contributions to this paper on the subject of our President and her recent trip to Rome. How, I have been asked, can someone so young (28) write in the manner of a man of, say, 508? Where does he get all the archaic references? The accumulation of baroque detail?

Well, he didn't lick it off the street. And his way of writing was a sight less sophisticated before I came on board as his literary adviser. There were rough edges before I took over and David would be the first to admit it.

The first thing I had to warn him about was the danger of "simple" writing, i.e. the sort of writing that every omadan going the streets can understand. Plain talk is for plain people and there is no point in having a brilliant command of language if you are going to make your meaning instantly obvious to everyone.

To start with I showed David a card I got the other day complimenting me on articles "full of brilliant humour camouflaged to appear simple". He was greatly impressed (that's how I got the job) and between us we decided his own style should be one of the deepest complexity camouflaged to appear humorous.

That was the working brief. David was busy drafting his recent long article and we started with his attack on Father Austin Flannery. David's initial effort was a bit watery (though in person he was so worked up I had to get him to lie down for a while) but I gave him a good pep talk, using extracts from Milton and Burke, and it wasn't long before he came up with the now famous bit about Flannery and his gang being responsible for "their complacent, characterless and crumbling compromise between church and modern Ireland".

As is obvious, David had already absorbed my little talk on alliteration and the only problem now is holding him back.

He also took my advice on revealing his "neophyte" status - only 28 years old - so that when he threw patronising insults at older (and supposedly wiser) churchmen they would be all the more effective. Before this, everyone presumed David was at least 80, which is of course a big media negative in a youth obsessed culture.

I also had the photograph of David commissioned to counteract the accompanying article by Medb Ruane last week. As David pointed out, the notion of a woman writing on theology and ontology was comical enough in itself, but I was taking no chances.

A picture is worth a thousand words, said David (he has a fondness for the odd cliche - harmless enough) "and at least 2,000 if they're written by a woman". He had a good laugh at that and it's a line he'll certainly be using in print before long.

I was glad to see from his most, recent letter that David took up my suggestion re introducing controversial matters like contraception and abortion even when they have no bearing whatsoever on the subject.

I encouraged him also to use archaic words like mayhap and bedizened, mix Latin and French preferably in the same sentence ("The en passant, ad hoc nature of the visit...") and savage every sacred cow in sight; David himself developed this to include "a golden calf, which, like Aaron, the Levitical lackeys and poltroon priests of today (or yesterday) worship, too, for fear of the people..."

The whole point here, I advised him, was to show off Biblical learning (otherwise what's the point of being a Biblical scholar?) and make the ordinary reader feel as ignorant as possible.

David is one fast Iearner and has already learned never to use a noun on its own - hence Mrs Robinson's "swaggering disrespect, forced mockery and an almost adolescent sneer".

However, we still have a lot of work to do, judging by a critical churchman's letter on Tuesday which suggested David's style showed "a mindset which I hoped had disappeared from the priesthood".

Not while David and I are working together, I hope. {CORRECTION} 97043000068