Sir, - In your report "RTE rethink on Angelus urged" (The Irish Times, February 24th) Dr Robin Eames, Archbishop of Armagh and member of the British House of Lords, is quoted as follows: "The Angelus does provide a particular problem since it is a specifically Roman Catholic devotion focusing upon the Blessed Virgin Mary. In that respect, it could be deemed by some to be exclusive."
The archbishop is inaccurate in his assertion; the Angelus is a New Testament-based devotion that focuses primarily on the Annunciation of the glorious Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. The mystery of God becoming man through the divine motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary (defined at the Council of Ephesus in 432 AD) is central to the faith of all Christians.
The ringing of the Angelus bell is already widely appreciated by members of other faiths as a time for prayer according to their own traditions. Should this public expression of religious liberty be eroded to satisfy the secularists and the irreligious?
And while strongly supporting measures favouring inclusiveness and pluralism in religious matters, surely the archbishop should logically advocate the shedding of the exclusivity of his own Church's title. The continued use of the Anglican Church's appellation (The Church of Ireland), legally confirmed by the British parliamentary Irish Church Disestablishment Act, 1869 (22, 23 Victoria, c. 42), preamble and paragraph 2, is more open to question than the Angelus bell in the Ireland of today. - Yours, etc., Rev Dr Thomas, S. O'Flynn, OP,
St John's College, Oxford.