Don’t hurt me again by defending the indefensible

THAT was an excellent letter from Micheal O’Driscoll (‘Church of one billion is a victim of mob mentality’, May 29), but I do take issue with some points.

Firstly, we can be thankful there are one billion very good Catholics in the world, but invoking large numbers can never justify the criminality of a few.

Bombardment by astronomical numbers belittles the dignity of every human person. It is like swatting an inconvenient fly with an atomic bomb, People whose first language is English make up 5% of the world’s population. That indicates there are roughly 50 million English-speaking Catholics. Four million Irish Catholics constituted at least 8% of the population at risk.