Disordered view

Pope Francis has now said that families shouldn’t shun their children for being gay, but should instead seek psychiatric help.

It is absolutely twisted that a celibate octogenarian who presides over a church beset by abuse scandals is trying to control the healthy sexual identities of others. Mr Bergoglio should confine his opinions to the supernatural and leave sexuality to those who have one.

NEIL BARBER Edinburgh Secular Society, Saughtonhall Drive,

Edinburgh

I’m mildly amused by the usual “secularist” suspects running out to say how awful the Catholic Church were in Ireland and that nowhere near enough contrition has been shown (do we up the ten Hail Marys to 100, perhaps?).

When anyone pointed out the inhumanities carried out at the behest of imams, secularists were the first to reflexscream “racist”, and they haven’t utter a single word about Israa al-ghomgham’s threatened beheading by Saudi Arabia’s brutal Wahhabi regime because she campaigned for human rights.

Let’s not even mention those whose sole problem with religion begins and ends with its attitude to homosexuality, yet have the colossal gall of accusing everyone else of one-track minds.

The right to rational dialectic was hard fought for and must be preserved at all costs, but our current crop are no sons and daughters of Descartes. As a born-again agnostic, I

despair of trolls masquerading as “enlightened”, gloating over every pratfall by cherry-picked targets unlikely to fight back. Richard Dawkins started the trend, and it has been downhill in a wobbly shopping trolley for the zeitgeist ever since.

MARK BOYLE Linn Park Gardens, Johnstone, Renfrewshire