JIM SEXTON,
Sir, - Vincent Browne's very poor whinge about meeting an elegant, handsome and gracious Cardinal who couldn't understand his obviously mumbled response (Opinion, January 19th) was remarkable only because of the misleading headline, whereby a foible of possible vanity (which would have gone unremarked in someone so normal as a barrister or a journalist) was by some alchemistic osmosis found to be a universal prototype of the arrogance of the Church, when the proper attitude of any cleric in this day and age should be a seemly posture of self-obscuring reticence.
I would have thought that Mr Browne and the headline writer might have found a more serious ground for any attack on the Church so beloved of so many of us, including your readers.
Puny slights on silly grounds serve to diminish the purportedly serious intent of the commentator, and of the journal which so uncritically jumps on the bandwagon of "Let's knock the Church". Journalists so often complain that "shoot the messenger" is not an appropriate response, and they are right, very often. Mr Browne has not done much to enhance the serious credibility of journalists - or is he simply a columnist, and so in a different class? - Yours, etc.,
JIM SEXTON, Ferndale, Ennis Road, Limerick.
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Sir, - Vincent Browne, a hard-nosed journalist, is sometimes amusing but nearly always touchingly naïve when he writes about the religion of his childhood.
He was scandalised by the present paganism of the Roman Church - for instance, by a cardinal in Santa Maria Maggiore still dressing and posturing like a prince; by the Pope using the canonisation of Padre Pio to demand absolute obedience. This, during a clerical sex abuse crisis caused chiefly by silent obedience to the institution.
When will Mr Browne grasp that the Roman Church, apart from its use of Gospel texts when it suits it, is not Christian? Those who study the Church's history, including the contradictory but unacknowledged changes made to its dogmas over the ages, know it has not been Christian since it became the religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Hobbes's words cannot be improved on: "The Roman Church is not other than the Ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."
Of course, cardinals are called "Your Eminence" and dress as Jesus said all pagan princes dress, in purple and fine linen. Of course, the Pope, like Hitler, Stalin and Mao, demands blind obedience. He is running a pagan institution based not on the power of love but on the love of power. The texts of Vatican I leave no doubts in the matter. Is it in imitation of Jesus who had nowhere to lay his head that the Pope lives in an "Apostolic" Palace with 11,000 rooms, or in imitation of Augustus Caesar who was titled Pontifex Maximus?
Rome never allows piety to get in the way of politics. Paul VI banned contraceptives, not to make Catholics holy but because to allow their use would undermine the authority of his predecessors, and, by implication, his own. Popes know that celibacy has little to do with chastity; otherwise they would instantly fire priests for having sexual liaisons. Celibacy has everything to do with controlling the clerical élite who run the institution locally in the name of an absolute monarch in Rome.
The nature of the Roman Church explains many things. Why John Paul can never put together two words, priest paedophiles: the conjunction is politically explosive. Why the child abuse scandal spread: the institution had to be protected by lies and hush-money at the expense of Christ's little ones. Why, when the scandal finally exploded in the media, priests were fired for one offence and not the chief culprits, the cardinals and bishops who made thousands of such crimes possible.
Why John Paul consecrates the entire universe to Mary: it repeats the political myth of the Middle Ages that he, as Vicar of Christ, is king of the universe. Why he keeps canonising saints like Padre Pio: he guarantees that Catholics who pray to them will have their requests heard on high.
In a friendly way I warn Mr Browne that he will go crazy if he expects the Church of Rome to be Christian. It is primarily and overwhelmingly political; and, to be fair, judged by pagan standards, it is exemplary. - Yours, etc.,
PETER DE ROSA, Ashford, Co Wicklow.