The picture John Boyne paints of his suburban Dublin parish is at odds with my memories of growing up in rural Catholic Ireland in the 60s and 70s (‘They blighted my youth and the youth of people like me’, Family, 4 October). My pious, mass-attending parents successfully raised 13 atheists (I remember vividly thinking it was all crap when I was about eight). I include my brother with Down’s syndrome among that numberwho, when a priest actually did visit our house and the TV was duly turned off, thus depriving him of Top of the Pops, grabbed the priest’s coat and hat, took him by the arm and showed him to the door – to the horror of my parents but to much hilarity among his siblings.
I don’t know any social circles where mass-going was a prerequisite – certainly not in our local pub – and as for painting the house for a priest’s visit for tea (it’s actually broken tellies they think the world is full of – à la Billy Connolly’s joke), the question of even setting an extra place would not have been considered. Yes, this is my own personal perspective but suffice to say not every parish in Ireland was like John’s. In south Armagh in the 60s and 70s – given the tyranny of the Stormont regime and the subsequent tyranny of British military occupation – there wasjust no room for any more tyranny, and generally speaking the Catholic church there just didn’t “try it on”. People had enough on their plates without worrying about going to hell.
Kieran Murphy
Dromintee, County Armagh
• One of the consequences for the Catholic church of forgetting its origin in Judaism is that it has no means to undo previous pronouncements, change course (Opinion, 9 October). Hebrew scripture is a catalogue of prophetic denunciations of the errors and failings of its practitioners; Jews have actuallycanonised these upbraidings and made them part of their understanding of God’s dealing with them. Catholicism, with its power centralised, finds justifying any alteration of doctrine nearly impossible. It claims as the bride of Christ to be indefectible and so fears divorce if it changes, yet, as any married person could tell its celibate clergy, marriage is a continual process of admitting one hasn’t got it right, and asking, and getting, another chance.
Harold Mozley
York
• To review the Catholic church’s approach to social policy and the family, Pope Francis has convened an all-male group, none of whose members has any direct experience of family life beyond the time he entered the seminary, which in most cases was quite some time ago. It’s worse than the Tesco boardroom.
Mark Davis
London