DAVID GRANT,
Madam, - In his messenger-shooting safari on your Letters page of February 18th, H.E. Counihan berates you for what he sees as hostile Editorials and critical articles about the Catholic Church, but condescendingly acknowledges - in a singularly offensive simile involving animal droppings on pavements - his acceptance of such writings over the past three-quarters of a century. One is lost in admiration of such forbearance.
His adulatory roll-call of those fee-requiring private schools wherein his children were taught rings with a certain smugness which will not, perhaps, be echoed by those whose ill-luck led them to be committed by a heartless State to the care of such religious congregations as have figured in your columns over the past few years in the matter of their cruel and abusive treatment of their young and defenceless charges.
The Hierarchy of his Church, he assures us, are "well capable of defending themselves". Indeed they are, as their continual evasions, deceptions, hair-splitting excuses and downright lies continue to demonstrate, in their determined campaign to avoid proper acceptance of both the odium of their past cover-up activities, and their fierce determination to avoid paying proper financial recompense to the life-damaged victims of their subordinate clergy.
We must for ever be grateful to such as The Irish Times and kindred members of what is loosely termed "the media" for their uncovering of the cess-pit of cruel and abusive behaviour so long concealed by those senior churchmen who ruled both Church and State here in Ireland. And I am at one with Dr Counihan in my admiration for the great majority of unnamed and unsung religious whose dedicated lives and work were - and are - of such immense benefit to a State which so cavalierly abandoned its weakest and neediest for so long, and who are now so unfairly besmirched by association with a Hierarchy that betrayed them, its sacred trust, and the very essence of Christianity itself. - Yours, etc.,
DAVID GRANT, Mount Pleasant, Waterford.