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I note with interest the Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Neary's scathing diatribe at Croagh Patrick denigrating almost everything in Irish life today (Irish Independent, July 30). Talk about nattering nabobs of negativism.
Yet Dr Neary has left a glaring gap in his fingerwagging homily.
The single greatest danger to the general welfare of children in Ireland over the last 50 years (at least) has been the Roman Catholic church.
This institution, which was endowed with the sacred trust of educating our children, at the taxpayers' expense, repaid that trust with the most heinous of criminal activity.
Physical and sexual abuse.
They might find some forgiveness if they had weeded out the vile offenders and embarked on a reform of institutional governance with some degree of accountancy and transparency.
Not our authoritarian and, to their way of thinking, infallible clergy.
They then proceeded with a cover-up that gave the Watergate a run for its money.
And even yet, leader and moral arbitor, Benedict XIV who has the audacity to opine that other Christian sects are not churches with valid orders, has not apologised to Catholics. Nor has he declared a Day Of Atonement . . .
Modern Ireland may not be perfect, but it is prosperous and successful.
Our children are better housed, fed and educated and more prepared to face their future than we ever were.
And, happily for them, they are less likely to have been abused and corrupted by religious teachers, most of today's teachers being secular.