The Cross of Sacrifice is inappropriate

Dear Editor, I find it astonishing that a Government which pretends to reflect all religions and none should adopt a Christian symbol to commemorate Irish dead in the First World War. I can only describe it as outstanding hypocrisy.

I also object to the term “sacrifice” in this context. The deaths of the soldiers in that war were not inflicted on them as any kind of prayer to an angry or vengeful or even a loving god, which this government does not believe in anyway.

Nor, given the literal Latin meaning of “sacrifice”, was there anything holy about their appalling sufferings.

My maternal great uncle served in some sort of horse artillery group. He survived the war as a shell-shocked alcoholic. Whatever this Government likes to think, he is not commemorated in the Glasnevin sculpture.

He is of course remembered at every Mass since his death and that’s enough.

Yours etc.,

Gerald Murphy,

Marley Grange,

Dublin 16.