Once again, thanks to everyone for taking the trouble to send in their contributions. I agree, An Pluieir, a good-natured discussion for the most part with worthwhile points from everyone.

No Doubt, I'm grateful to you for going back to my original post and looking at it again. I still think, however, that you're slightly missing the point.

No-one's trying to 'cleanse' anyone here, at least not me. I'm not someone who 'doesn't like Catholics'. I explained at the outset that I am one. It's part of who I am and I'm very proud of it, especially when I see some of the work that the church has done in Central America and among disadvantaged kids in the deep south of the US. In fact, when I was a kid, the order that ran my parish in London was based in the US and apart from another UK parish in Stevenage most of their parishes were in Alabama, New England and Quebec.

Think about it. This was the early 1960s, I'm a kid in Middlesex and I'm receiving communion from men who marched with Martin Luther King. The head of the order was on Nixon's 'enemies list'! And I don't like Catholics? I don't think so.

As far as my so-called 'remarks about clergy abuse' are concerned I'll say only this. I think I've made my views about individuals in the clergy fairly clear, at least the ones I've been (for the most part) priveleged to know. The problem is, as I see it, that the Church as an institution, and particularly it's hierarchy, was lost the confidence of many Catholics as an organisation that can be trusted to work with children and young people. Maybe that's unfair and maybe it's not. Either way, the Church has got a lot of work to do to regain that trust. I hope it manages it. I know that what's been going on isn't confined to the Catholic Church. But as a Catholic I feel that I have a responsibility to make my views known about my own Church. You may differ on those views and I respect your views. Just please don't misrepresent mine.

As for 'throwing the Catholic baby out with the sectarian bathwater', as the father of a Catholic baby (well, three-year-old) I don't really know what to make of that one. It's not, I repeat, other people's religious beliefs that bother me. What bothers me is when (for instance) a long-serving member of our organisation (not me)dares, in a crowded meeting,to make the point that we are a non-denominational organisation and then gets barracked and harrassed for his pains, including one remark to the effect of 'you wouldn't be saying that if we were talking about Pakistanis'. Then the same member has his views misrepresented and dismissed by other members who then proceed to attack him behind his back - and then insist on having a mass.

Now, you're probably right that there aren't currently hordes of Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists (I know I've still left plenty of people out but it's late and I've got work tomorrow) pining outside our doors to be included but deterred only by the prospect of an optional mass being provided for those who want it. And I think you're right about us 'bending over backwards' to not exclude non-Catholics in Ireland. Why else would our constitution say what it does? Part of my point, however, is that we don't do that in the part of the world where I live.

I wonder about the future in Ireland sometimes. I suppose all second-generation 'plastic paddies' like me do from time to time. Mass emigration is, for now at least, a thing of the past. Instead, there are people emigrating to Ireland from all over the world, including asylum seekers who arrive with nothing but their identities and it's hard enough for them to hold on to that. Where have we heard this before?

I imagine that many of these people will in future cling to the 'faith of their fathers' just as many of us have. Supposing they want to explore the music and culture of their adopted home as well as that of the countries they have come from? What welcome will they find?

In the past the Irish community was replenished from generation to generation by new emigrants, among whom were musicians, music, dance and language teachers and young families eager to keep hold of a sense of who they were. This isn't happening anymore to anything like the same extent and probably won't happen again unless the Irish economy collapses again - which nobody wants.

So how do we go forward? Do we continue (as some of us still do) to behave like a beleaguered, victim community with our backs to the wall and nowhere to go? Or do we look around us at the world we live in and redefine where we fit into it, all the while taking care of and affording the proper respect to the generations who came before us and (in some cases literally) built that world for us?

Anyway, I'm off to my bed. Just one more thing, No Doubt. The name. It bothers me a little. No Doubt? Really? Not EVER?