MUST religious believers be dubbed “sheep” and “superstitious primitives” by a contemptuous Robert Meggs (HAS, Feb 16)?

What might top American scientist Francis Collins, the Human Genome Project leader and Papal appointee to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, think?

What about Michelangelo, Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Faraday, Boyle, Pasteur, TS Eliot, Kipling, Solzhenitsyn, Churchill, Mandela and ML King? What about Wogan and Delia? Does Mr Meggs really believe his own words?

He raises the tragic case of a Brazilian archbishop’s excommunication of doctors who carried out an abortion on a nine-year-old allegedly raped by her stepfather. The mother was excommunicated, but not the rapist – abortion regarded the worse offence. Ultra-conservative Brazil expects bishops to faithfully uphold the church’s teachings. But when such an extreme case occurs individually, their anti-abortion belief is tested to extreme.

This case’s circumstances present the most intractable moral dilemma in Catholic societies, as similarly in our own “should we torture a human being to save lives?”

Many of religious belief and none regard torture/abortion as the ultimate denial of human rights and dignity. It’s the task of Catholic archbishops to uphold the inviolability of life and care for all. It’s not always easy.

Michael Baldasera, Darlington.

RE Robert Meggs’ recent letter (HAS, Feb 16). He seems to have a bee in his bonnet about the Church and I’m beginning to wish he’d give it a rest. Such constant harping on the same theme eventually becomes tedious.

Tony Kelly, Crook, Co Durham.