Courtney McGrailDear Editor, It was interesting to see the Pope in Sweden this week to mark 499 years since an Augustinian monk from a small town in Germany nailed a set of heretical theses to the town bulletin board, in hope of starting a conversation about his new ideas.
People with less education and training than required to understand his proposals deeply, and more animus (quite a bit of it legitimate) against both spiritual and temporal authority than were conducive to the dispassionate discourse of reason on the best of days, along with another group of noblemen and ecclesiastical types of quite different character and motives, took his ideas, elected him their leader, and set in motion a series of events that would destroy the res publica Christiana in Europe, plunge the civilised world into 120 years of incessant war, drain the treasuries of whole nations, and claim the lives – directly or indirectly – of millions, all while permanently weakening the Body of Christ on earth and crippling its ability to give credible witness to the Gospel.
Yours etc.,
Sheila O’Doherty,
Letterkenny, Co. Donegal.