Sir, - When I read Kevin Myers's plea for fair play for nuns, priests and brothers (An Irishman's Diary, August 13th), I thanked God for one decent journalist. As an old Kevin to a young one, may I say, God bless you, son.
Why do those who have abandoned their religion hate it so much? Why so anxious to draw others after them? Why do they desire us to cut our roots, our religion and history, and to change from a nation to a rabble without religion or honour? I think of the gurus of RTE who raised a witch hunt against the innocent sisters of Golden Bridge, the ignoble attacking the noble. Were they proud to have turned the lady vendors of Moore Street against all Sisters? Why so vicious? An Austrian novelist and sociologist gives an interesting answer. He is Professor Erik von Kuevelt-Leddihn.
"What will happen", he asks, "if I were to be completely deprived of my faith? As a novelist who has to `imagine things' I have sometimes asked myself this question. I fear I would lost my identity, that my poor self, emptied of all religion and cut off from truth eternal, would become a ruthless, shiftless and very desperate animal; a cunning, melancholic creature, filled with a consuming hatred - a hatred for Christ and his Church". - Yours, etc.,
Fr K. Cullen, OSA, John's Lane Church, Dublin 8.