Letters | 10 April 2010

Read vs Parris

Sir: I found it difficult to contain my derisive laughter at the ludicrous vapourings of Piers Paul Read in your Easter issue debate. The idea of the Roman Catholic Church and its teachings as the bulwark against the forces of evil set to overwhelm us is too risible to be borne.

Given its history of murder, cruelty, hypo-crisy, dishonesty, sexual depravity and corruption, to name but a few (and that’s only the morally infallible popes for God’s sake), and the utter nonsense of its doctrines on transubstantiation, Mary’s assumption into heaven, the sinfulness of ‘artificial’ contraception (if you intend contraception, what does it matter if you use a thermometer, a calendar, a chemical or chance your arm, so to speak, with coitus interruptus), etc, I just cannot see that this authoritarian, soulless institution has anything to teach us about morality, decency or anything else.

Richard Wyndham
by email



Sir: Having read (twice) the article on the Catholic Church by Matthew Parris, I cannot quite see anything more here than a moderately entertaining but reheated dish of clichéd accusations and some factual inaccuracies.