Sir, - Perhaps it's time to outlaw the Catholic Church in Ireland. It seems to be responsible for all our woes. Everything that is sordid and sinister in Irish life seems to derive ultimately from the Roman Catholic Church and its pernicious influence.
Clearly there would have been no orphanages or industrial schools if the Catholic Church had not existed. Gay Byrne could not have introduced sex to Ireland had not the Catholic Church banned it first. The religion of the majority must have been responsible for emigration as it is only now, when Catholicism is in full retreat, that Irish people are no longer been driven from their country.
All the corruption in high places, which has led to a plethora of tribunals and commissions, is probably due to the Catholic Church. After all, who educated these dishonest, amoral people? Who led them astray into believing that only little people pay tax and that swindling the State and EU institutions is fine provided nobody notices?
Our belated industrial development is clearly the consequence of Catholic influence, with its outrageous belief in a life better than this one. Nor can the Church's obsession with ideals be healthy in a world where reality rules. Clearly we have no need for clerical preachers any more when the media is full of self-righteous people who burn with an insatiable desire to save us from the Catholic Church.
It's time to take Catholicism out of schools and hospitals, time to do a Henry VIII on all the lands and property which the Church has accumulated at the expense of the people, time to set up another tribunal to try those who colluded in Catholicism by taking vows and living in quasi-military establishments. Why wait any longer? This foreign ideology must be routed from Irish life once and all.
Paisley is right. The real problem was not 800 years of British misrule but 1,500 years of Roman rule. - Yours, etc., Joe Coy,
Tuam, Co Galway.