Killing animals for Christmas

Madam, - Trust the begrudgers to hitch their various hobby horses to the Christmas bandwagon

Madam, - Trust the begrudgers to hitch their various hobby horses to the Christmas bandwagon. Gerry Boland (December 21st) wants to enlist Jesus's help in denying the clergy what Mr Dedalus identifies as the tasty bit we call the Pope's nose. Doubtless he would find fault even with the curate's egg.

Canon B. Lougheed (December 31st) does well to remind Mr Boland not only of that charcoal grill breakfast the risen Christ served his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, but also of that tender, even overdone, lamb "promised from eternal years".

A pity, then, that he failed to mention that other weighty staple of the Christmas table: the Gadarene swine. One would have to say that the owners of those 2,000 demonically possessed pigs (according to Mark) would have at least equal grounds for complaint as that once leafy fig tree, blasted for being figless when it was not the season for figs.

Madam, if these problems of exegesis are beyond the theological scope of Gerry Boland or Canon Lougheed, why not let Vincent Twomey SVD shed a divine Word - with the usual right of contrary reply for Sean Fagan SM?

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- Yours, etc,

EDDIE FINNEGAN, Wightman Road, London N4.