The Church must stick to Christ’s teachings
AGAIN and again we find letters to newspapers telling the Catholic Church ‘how to save itself’ (Billy Ryle, Mail Letters, July 11).
With the greatest respect and in the light of true Christian charity, could I answer that the Catholic Church does not need saving by man as it is presided over by God who founded it.
‘The Church must change, adopt and modernise’ the letter says, echoing the reason given for Vatican II.
As a 75-year-old I have lived through the thriving Church of pre-Vatican II and the ‘modernised’ Church of post-Vatican II, especially the abandonment of the traditional Mass.
The statistics of the decline of priests, nuns and church-going amount to those of a reformation. This decline continues as more and more reforms are tried.
The last thing churchmen seem to want as a solution is a return to the Church that worked for centuries. The idea that women could be priests is akin to a female Santa Claus. The Mass is a re-enactment of Calvary. Christ chose to be incarnated as a man, no woman can represent Him as an ‘alter-Christ’ which a priest is.
I could see another flood leaving the Church in such a scenario. Women have always served the Church in different ways, and Jesus loved them for it. As for married priests, well the same rule applies. Christ was unmarried and celibacy was always seen as living proof for a true vocation.
JAMES O’HANLON, Churchtown, Dublin 14.
Trade unions are vital
I HAVE said this before and I will say it again, the only defence the citizens of any civilised country have against incompetent, uncaring governments is the trade union movement.
The trade unions have the power to call a general strike when the Government is acting stupidly, and not discharging its responsibility to the people. Unfortunately, the trade union movement in Ireland is as incompetent as our Government.
Take for example the age of retirement. In Saturday’s Irish Daily Mail, there was an article with the headline: ESRI plan to raise retirement age to 70 is ‘bizarre and unfeasible’.
That is true, but it should also have added ‘grossly unfair to the workers’.
The trade union movement should force the Government not only to scrap this silly idea of making the retirement age 70, but to reverse the recent change of retirement age from 68 back to 65. If the Government is having difficulty funding the pensions, then just increase the PRSI contributions, and also stop wasting funds like the €4billion to be spent on the rail system in Dublin.
Another article in the paper says that TDs are off on summer holidays for 68 days; what sort of a cocked-up banana republic have we become? The amount of annual leave in the civil service ranges from 33 days for the seniors down to 22 days for the lowest ranking. Everybody should get the same annual leave. Seniors are well compensated for their position by their high wages and should not get extra leave as well.
It is obvious to me that we have too many politicians, and it is time we reduced it to one politician per county. If they can get 68 days off in summer, plus the Easter break and the Christmas break, not to mention junkets, they are only part-time anyway.
So I would suggest to the hard-working, fee-paying union members: get your union executives to do what they should have been doing all along and look after the members.
Unions not only have a duty to their members, but also to the community and the weakest at large. No union executive should be allowed become a director of any firm, as happened in the past when the general secretary of Unite was a director of Aer Lingus. It is just not on. JOHN FAIR, Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
A shameful racket
MY 25-year-old daughter has Down syndrome. Every day brings a battle with what is now the disability industry.
Parents are forensically ‘means’ tested for medical cards while their heartbreak is a career for CEOs, directors, family liaison managers and many more titled jobs. That grief, suicide and disability are now industries is truly shameful. It’s all a racket!
PHYL KENNEDY, Galway city.
Same old politics
POLITICS has always been subject to being trapped in a time-warp of power and money first, and people and fairness last.
If we assume that before money was invented bartering was the human form of trade, it’s quite clear that some must have had more sheep and cattle than others, with which to influence the local political druid.
Thus if we fast track 6,000 years to present-day politics, what has changed? Nothing!
Politicians pretend to be the voice of the people, especially at elections. And the people continue to give away more of their rights, as they continue to be treated like cattle fodder.
By voting for the same genetic political druids that have been in place ever since the dawn of Stonehenge, people will continue to be used as sacrificial lambs at the druids’ altars. ANTHONY WOODS,
Ennis, Co. Clare.