Church reveals a spirit of inquiry

TONY PROCTOR (Letters, October 7) appears to believe that a Catholic ethos in schools tends to stunt high performance in mathematics, science and technology and that more generally it is inimical to a true spirit of educational inquiry.

This is odd when one considers it was faith in the essential rationality, order and intelligibility of the universe which led to the birth of science in the Christian west.

The depersonalisation of nature that occurred with Christianity was also essential to the birth of science and explains why this birth happened in a specifically Christian milieu.