Cloistered seminarians

Letter in today's 'Irish Times'

Sir, – I was disappointed to read in Noel Whelan’s column (Opinion, January 14th) that the few seminarians in Maynooth are to be locked in behind newly erected doors, seemingly on foot of a recommendation of the apostolic visitors that Pope Benedict sent to Ireland last year.

Today’s seminarians are usually so rigidly pious and theologically conservative that, I reckon, they require regular exposure to secular reality rather than incarceration in a spiritual ghetto, even if that is where they prefer to be. Should these seminarians be eventually ordained, they will have to minister in a complex world, not in an incense-filled cocoon. – Yours, etc,

Fr KEVIN HEGARTY,

Carne, Belmullet, Co Mayo.