Madam, - Like John Waters (Opinion, March 5th), I applaud the Taoiseach for having the courage to speak out on this urgent matter so trenchantly and so forthrightly
Bearing in mind what the Taoiseach had said, and also in the light of the EU's notorious failure to specify the Christian roots of Europe in its aborted constitution, many citizens will view with increasing alarm the determined slide of Old Europe down the slippery slope to blinkered and dogmatically aggressive secularised liberalism.
The French Revolution may be considered to have dismantled the traditional, sacred foundation of the State and thus to have relegated God to the status of a private matter of no public consequence.
While many in the secularist and liberal camp applaud this development, some serious commentators see it as a moral catastrophe. In their view, any charter of human rights that fails to enshrine something resembling the traditional conception of what constitutes humanity will be incapable of confronting the damage done by the irresponsible and virulently aggressive secularising tide.
Without a moral foundation and some sense of absolute values, Western Europe has been rendered pathetically weak and vulnerable in face of the real threat of anti-Western jihad currently emanating from the east. - Yours, etc,
THOMAS P WALSH, Faussagh Road, Cabra, Dublin 7.
Madam, - Although I can appreciate that John Waters may feel alienated from today's secular society because of his religious convictions, I would hardly deem it necessary for him to suggest that those of us lacking an "inherent religious dimension" are somehow "less than human". This rather bewildering remark was then followed by the apparent claim that, as an atheist, my existence had "no hope, no meaning and no freedom".
If such crude mud-slinging and, dare I say, debasement of life itself is prevalent in a religious society, I think that I shall be content for the so-called "fashionability of atheism, agnosticism and secularism" of recent times to continue. - Yours, etc,
CONOR LEAHY, Cypress Grove North, Templeogue, Dublin 6W.
Madam, - If there is a current phenomenon of "aggressive secularism", as the Taoiseach and his speechwriter argue, then by definition its target is twofold: organised religion; and the concept of the spiritual in people's lives.
In the reaction to the speech's controversial claim, the focus seems to be on the former to the virtual exclusion of the latter.
But mankind's need for something spiritual is innate, whether admitted or not, and the more important of the two.
It is also the more resilient. - Yours, etc,
OLIVER McGRANE, Marley Avenue, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.