Sir, - "Stories were told of the ruthlessness of priests in enforcing the rule," Patsy McGarry quotes from Dr Stephen Mennell's study of Protestant dismay at the Ne Temere degree (The Irish Times, January 3rd).
I have had occasion to examine the prayers and intentions of ordinary (if pious) Catholics during the 1940s and 1950s, and it was not at all unusual for a mother to ask for prayers "to avert a mixed marriage", or to offer prayers of thanksgiving for "mixed marriage averted".
The phrasing made it clear that people felt deeply about this. Some priests may have been zealous in their teaching, but parents, notably mothers, often looked on a mixed marriage as a disaster (and a danger to faith).
To put the matter in its social context, this was around the period when job adverts in The Irish Times not infrequently specified: "Protestants only". - Yours, etc.,
London W6.