Madam, - During a recent visit to St Patrick's Church of Ireland cathedral in Dublin, I was disappointed to discover a wide range of rosary beads for sale in the cathedral shop. I subsequently wrote to the Dean of St Patrick's, on behalf of the Evangelical Protestant Society, to request that these beads be withdrawn.
I said that while I freely recognised that not everything in the shop should be required to reflect a Protestant ethos, I felt that nothing on sale should actually conflict with that ethos.
The Rosary and the beads associated with it have no place within Protestantism and ought not to be found, for sale or otherwise, in a Protestant church. I further suggested that the space currently occupied by such emblems of Romanism would be better used, for example, to stock for example, a range of evangelical Christian literature.
Readers might be interested in the dean's reply. He advised me that the beads are sold because the majority of visitors were not Anglicans, and "if these visual aids are of use to them so much the better". His attitude is, of course, typical of the ecumenical movement and its leaders who, as the blind leading the blind, are quite content to call darkness light and light darkness.
The dean also pointed out that he doesn't share my view of Protestantism. Needless to say, neither I nor any other Bible-believing Protestant share his. - Yours, etc,
WALLACE THOMPSON, Secretary, Evangelical Protestant Society, Belfast.