Sir, - As his eschatology agenda is unclear, Tony Downes's Rite and Reason (January 28th) response to my December 31st article on Catholic male absenteeism is rather incoherent. It is many years since McLuhan said that without agenda clarity, we cope poorly with change.
However, I agree with him that due to the absenteeism, our preachers cannot now initiate reversal. That is why I'm using newspapers and RTE to initiate debate. For 30 years I have been forecasting the effects of the most significant event in recent Irish history, namely, Catholic preaching's dropping of the "Hell pain" theme and its non-replacement. In the early 1980s in your columns I forecast 12 effects, all of which have been borne out.
One I foresaw was the rise in suicides. Now I would add a rise in the killing of chronically ill and economically burdensome people, particularly those over 60. Suicide and euthaniasia make sense if, as one-handed preaching lets us presume, the next-life outcome is painless.
Yet acceptable, challenging two-handed preaching is now possible. We can say that no one will go to Hell, and that everyone will go to Heaven after whatever, if any, minor-to-major Purgatory pain each needs due to unoffset callousness. It is as simple as that, and as challenging.
Such preaching can turn things round by the year 2000. Much depends on how compassionate our bishops feel about those (including themselves) who may be heading for Purgatory pain. If they do not feel so enough, neither will our priests nor the rest of us, and Mass-going among Dublin males will, I forecast, drop from its present 25 per cent or so level to around 10 per cent to make our Millennium celebrations pathetic. -Yours, etc.,
Sandford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.