Apology over Drogheda Mass

Madam, - Nowhere in the Rev David Frazer's letter of May 31st is the display of clericalism more evident than his claim that "…

Madam, - Nowhere in the Rev David Frazer's letter of May 31st is the display of clericalism more evident than his claim that "the Eucharist belongs to all Catholic Christians". It does not - it is a gift, for which the epiclesis - the form of the petition which asks the Father to send the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine and make them into the Body and Blood of Christ - is prayed at each and every celebration.

The notion that the Eucharist "belongs" to someone, or some people, is a delusion which allows a person to decide that it can be used for any or all kinds of purposes - whether to reinforce the views of a politician on 1916, as in Drogheda, or to aid "the evolution of human understanding" in Laytown.

Petty manifestations of power have characterised clericalism all too often in the past in this country. But when it takes the form that what they found in the Church they will not keep, that what they learned they will not teach, and that what they received from the fathers they will not hand on to the sons, then truly it is a new, and altogether more arrogant, form of clericalism. - Yours, etc,

MAURICE A. O'SULLIVAN, Ashton Wood, Bray, Co Wicklow.