Madam, - The Catholic Primate, Archbishop Seán Brady (August 23rd), takes a sideswipe at secularism while criticising the emptiness of modern life.
His criticism of "practices which claim to unveil the future" sounds like the Easter Bunny casting aspersions on the existence of the tooth fairy.
Both religious faith and the empty practices he criticises share the same basis in illusion and superstition.
The route away from superstition is not through the empty dogmas and arrogant certainties of religious faith.
We live in a country today that has made significant progress from the broken, poverty-stricken and small-minded society that existed for much of the 20th century.
This remarkable progress has come as we opened our minds and unshackled ourselves from the bindings of faith.
Our society has problems. Like the problems of our past they are better solved through human communities and imagination than by trusting in God's providence. Nothing is inevitable.
We do not control the future. Neither does "God's promise and plan". We can, however, help create the future. - Yours, etc,
DERMOT CASEY, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.
Madam, - In his sermon (August 23rd) Archbishop Seán Brady mentions the media presence of pop astrology, tarot phone lines and so on as "at best a vacuous form of entertainment". At worst, he sees it as symptomatic of efforts to exercise complete control over the future and to have power over time.
As an astrologer who is not in the entertainment business, I think the latter description is an overstatement, especially if it is implicitly referring to contemporary astrological practice.
My clients do not ask me to tell them what is going to happen in their future, and I wouldn't be able to answer them if they did. The future isn't "written in the stars", but is constrained by present circumstances, and how one chooses to act. Astrology is a navigational tool which illuminates options regarding courses of action and optimising the decision-making process in that respect.
The quotation from the catechism, which in its full version refers to practices such as astrology "manifesting a desire to secure the protection of occult powers" is anachronistic in the sense that it relates to a medieval context. There are no occult powers involved in modern astrology. The statement contrasts with the desire to secure protection from divine powers through prayer and ritual within the Christian tradition, which is presumably okay.
It is true that superstitious beliefs are a perennial feature of human nature, but what is considered superstitious is relative to a body of knowledge and understanding. Praying to Our Lady of Knock to intercede in one's future or visiting an astrologer are both symptoms of superstition to a humanist.
For that matter, a belief that science provides the exclusive means of acquiring knowledge about reality is arguably also a superstition, whether or not its efforts to control the future eventually prove futile.
But I don't suppose that would cut any ice with Richard Dawkins. - Yours, etc,
BILL SHEERAN, Lower Camden Street, Dublin.