Eric Gill: Should his Stations of the Cross stay or should they go?

AcrnouGH I deeply sympathise with the distress of Margaret Kennedy and of anyone who has suffered sexual abuse, her letter (March 27) is both irrelevant and based on superficial knowledge.
I am engaged on a book about the Ditchling Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic,of which Eric Gill is a co-founder.
I have been obliged to research all the book written by and about him, his letters and his diaries.
These disclose that he certainly did have incestuous relations with one and probably two of his sisters, and with two (not three as Ms Kennedy says) of his daughters. There is absolutely no evidence that the youngest daughter was involved.
I do not condone this behaviour, but let us be accurate. I am not sure that the word abuse is justified when his sisters were apparently complaisant, and the daughters did not seem to be aware that anything was abnormal.
They never went to school, and had little contact with their contemporaries. But he knew that what he was doing was wrong. In one place he writes, "This must stop". The diaries contain far more accounts of birthday parties, drawing lessons, mending dolls or haymaking together than the more lurid entries.
All this has no bearing on the Westminster Stations. No-one but Gill could have done it at that time. Winefride Pruden, D S S Burgess Hill Wirt Sussex
I WRITE verrx strong support for Margaret Kennedy's letter (27 March) about Eric Gill's religious works, although I did not see the programme.
Would someone in a position of authority of the Church, perhaps Cardinal Hume himself, explain why we have the work of a paedophile in our churches? June Munton Maidstone, Kent
ONE REASON FOR removing Eric Gill's carvings from the Cathedral is that, however skilful he may have been, so much of his (other) art was pure pornography. Does that count for nothing?
Name and address supplied
I WRITE TO RECORD my vote
in favour of Margaret Kennedy's suggestion that Eric Gill's Stations of the Cross should be removed from Westminster Cathedral forthwith.
I am aware, of course, that it might be said that there would be little enough art left in our churches if the works of all those who have given scandal were removed.
But I do not back the suggestion on the grounds that Gill was guilty of grave sin, for that is not for me to judge. Rather I back it on the gross nature of the sins which he committed.
Eric James Sutton, Surrey.
THE LETTER ON "Abusive carving" coming from Margaret Kennedy of Christian Survivors of Sexual Abuse argues for an identification in a single person of productive gifts with moral conduct.
What of those whose lives reflect the panoply of human exploration?
What of Caravaggio, the wild murderous homosexual painter? Are we to throw out his religious paintings from the Vatican Pinacoteca?
What of the "Red Priest", Vivaldi, who was far too familiar with the orphan-girls of the Ospedal della Pieta in Venice? Are we to forbid his Gloria and other glorious music from being played in our midst?
Are the Westminster Cathedral Stations not in fact the redeeming higher work of an earthy artist?
Alberic Stacpoole OSB Ampleforth Abbey
IF GOD SAW FIT to give Eric Gill artistic talent in spite of his sins, and if Gill chose to use some of that talent to the glory of God then who are we to come between them?
If his work indeed "has no place in Westminster Cathedral" then I suggest that one amongst us who is without sin should remove the first station.
Ms I E Howard Bedford