Sir, - Am I alone in finding it bizarre that, whenever there is a report of an atrocity in the North of Ireland, the religious affiliations of the victim and the alleged perpetrator are mentioned? This seems to me to be giving some sort of validity to what is surely an extremely flimsy justification for committing acts of murder and mayhem. I would not claim to be a Christian, but I believe that no-one who has understood the teachings of Christ, be he Anglican, Catholic or Dissenter, could condone such murderous intolerance as we have witnessed over the past 30 years.
Some people, of course, need little by way of an excuse to attack another person. The fact that a man has blue eyes, walks with a limp or carries a red suitcase, can be sufficient. Then there is the primitive tribal syndrome. If I am an Arsenal fan and he is a Chelsea fan, what more need be said?
This, I imagine, is the key to the situation in the North. The religious affiliations are just convenient labels, like football scarves, to differentiate one man from another.
I realise that, to the initiated, just an address or a surname will often identify someone as Catholic or Protestant, if they crave this information. However, I feel that if RTE and the others would omit from their reports what is really totally irrelevant, and simply state the truth - that a man has been maimed or killed because his assailant is a thug and a blackguard - we would have a clearer picture of what is really going on. - Yours, etc.,
Paul Griffin, Glyncoed, Glogue, Pembrokeshire, Wales.