Bishop’s intercession - He’s right: materialism is empty

IT WOULD be all too easy to deride the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Sean Brady, because of his Knock attack on our growing enthusiasm for horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, tarot cards, clairvoyants and mediums.

It would be too easy to imagine him as some latter-day persecutor of jazz bands; the red-faced cliche, driving couples from the bushes around the summertime dance halls of Ireland, swinging hurley.

It is a pity that the archbishop mixed important messages about the emptiness of materialism, the dreadful demands inherent in a voracious consumer society and our soaring suicide rates with an attack on sections of the relatively harmless entertainment business.