Seamus McKenna, an early member of Atheist Ireland, has had hundreds of short letters published in the Irish Times over nearly fifty years. He has now compiled them in a fascinating book, the Reconstitution of Ireland. You can buy it at Amazon.
Seamus is a principled contrarian with a snappy writing style. He starts each section with a memoir-style introduction about how he experienced life in a changing Ireland. For authenticity, some letters are printed as images, as they appeared in the paper.
His topics range from the Irish clerical staples of divorce, contraception, abortion, education, and abuse, to the Northern Irish Troubles, the financial crash, international affairs, and whimsical trivia. But the thread that holds it together is the need to separate church and state.
In tight 200-300-word pieces, Seamus argues that church control of state-funded schools, with religion permeating the school day through an integrated curriculum, and religious oaths for President and judges, are incompatible with a modern republic.
His letters follow the slow decline of church control of sexual morality, from the McGee case on contraception and his own move to Derry to obtain a UK divorce that was illegal here, to the referendums that made abortion and blasphemy constitutionally lawful.
Having lived in Derry during the Troubles, he describes how the IRA murdered his friend Terence McKeever for doing electrical work for the RUC. Having worked in property development during the Celtic Tiger, he covers the EU, the financial crash, the Troika, and austerity.
True to the often quirky nature of Irish Times letters, he examines the relative merits of wine corks versus screw-caps, promotes books as props for reading the newspaper at breakfast, and engages in a detailed readers’ debate on the physics of raindrops.
His advice to letter-writers: avoid preambles, keep the letter short, and write on one subject. Also, compose and send it immediately you become aware of the trigger, even if you have to break off from your breakfast to write it.
As a declaration of interest, Seamus refers positively to the work of Atheist Ireland in his letters and his book. He also wrote an article for Atheist Ireland following the Mother and Baby Homes report in 2021. You can read that article here.