Should a celibate lay down law for couples?

IT really does seem ludicrous that an individual who is sworn to celibacy should have the gall to pronounce on how, in the main, young married or partnership couples should lead their lives.

The celibate in question, Fr Tom Ingolsby, criticised a former government minister, Senator Mary O’Rourke, for apparently not understanding “that contraception is against the law of God and intrinsically immoral”. (Irish Examiner letters, October 18).

Fr Ingolsby doesn’t tell us how he knows that to be true, but we’ll let that pass.

The question is, however - what does this man want?

A return to the days of subservient and grinding poverty, 10 or more children in families, and a Catholic Church that instructed often terrified and gullible people how to think and how to behave?

How could that kind of tyranny have any basis in religion or morality?

Thankfully, the great majority of young people in Ireland today have seen through that kind of control and have rejected it out of hand.

For that, at least, thank God.

Nick Nolan

The Old Schoolhouse

Melleray

Co Waterford