Sir, - I would like to take a little space to reply to Fr Cullen who responded (May 11th) to my comments on RTE's broadcasting of the Angelus.
I don't think I need to take up his explanation that I said what I did because I have a "dread of the picture of Mary and her Child", or that "doubters", myself included, suffer from "deep insecurity".
But there is a real issue here. I said that the broadcast Angelus was wildly divisive. He asks "Divisive of whom?". Divisive of the Irish people is my reply. RTE should be talking to the whole island even if we are about to give up the definition of the "National Territory" in the Constitution (and I very much hope we do). In this island there are, very roughly, a million people who are Protestant by tradition and culture. There are also Jews, Moslems and other small religious groupings.
Also, within the state, more numerous and more rapidly growing than all the religious minorities put together, if my reading of the last census is correct, are the people of no religion.
It is customary to claim that 90 odd per cent of the population within the Republic is Catholic. By origin and culture (even though the latter is arguable) this may be so. But in terms of belief and behaviour it is certainly untrue. In the working class suburbs of Dublin concerning which I have some experience, the young are mostly post-Christian. I believe that very many of the people whom spokespersons for the Church are anxious to include in its ranks are pretty fed up with much of Catholic doctrine, and even more so with the carry-on of its officials.
RTE is a state service. Broadcasting on it, at set times every day, a prayer which gives a special place to the Virgin Mary promotes a feeling of exclusion, of alienation and of not belonging, in the minds of the groups I have mentioned. So it is divisive of the inhabitants of this State and of this island.
Democracy is not the rule of the majority, but the rule of the people, all of them. And pluralism requires sympathy for and empathy with the feelings of other belief-groups, religious and atheist.
What I felt most depressing about Father Cullen's letter is that he totally fails to see that this is the issue. He attributes to me feelings concerning which he has no way of telling whether he is right or wrong. He declines to confront my assertion that there is no historical evidence for the existence of Jesus (or indeed Mary). Above all he does not discuss what I am really on about, which is pluralism. Broadcasting the Angelus is only important as a symptom of the lack of pluralist feelings in the Irish Catholic Church. I think that Father Cullen's letter is further evidence of that lack. At this moment, more than ever, a change to sincerer pluralism would be welcome. - Yours, etc., Justin Keating,
Leeson Park, Dublin 6.