Religious punks?

Sir, – Frank McNally remarks that the Donegal Deist John Toland (1670-1722) may have had a bardic heritage (An Irishman's Diary). Toland certainly lived up to that tradition in his verse diatribe against Catholicism, notably in the couplet, "The swarming Herds of crafty Priests and Monks, /The Female Orders of Religious Punks". He held Anglicanism in equal contempt. – Yours, etc,

IGGY McGOVERN,

Dublin 14.