Dothegirls Hall, surely not?

POOR Karen Armstrong! Someone should have told her that in order to survive a Convent education a "gel" must have a sense of humour (however infantile).
At the Convent where 1 was a boarder from the age of nine to 17, one popular punishment was for the sinner to kneel in front of 'the whole school and recite an apologia in French "Mesdames, je vous demand pardon du mauvais example que je vous ai donne, des peines que je vous ai causes. J'espere que vous me pardonnerez et que vous prierez pour rnoi". For the less able (or "dim" as they were tactlessly called in those days) it was good practice in the use of
• W1IY GIVE so much space to Karen Armstrong? Hardly fair on the convent concerned!
As a pupil there before Karen's time I remember it only with great pleasure, and had difficulty in believing it to be the same place. Hardly a place ruled by fear when of Karen's home life — it seems to me, the answer
• WOULD IT not be more truthful of Karen Armstrong to admit that she lost her Faith, because of pride and lack of prayer, rather than anything to do with the nuns who sheltered her, or Church history?
I get rather weary of these nuns and priests who blame everyone and everything rather than their own shortcomings for throwing back at God the gift He has offered them.
I spent 15 years as a pupil at Notre Dame in this city, and I can only thank them for the teaching they gave me, which made me cherish my religion, love my work as a teacher, and enabled me to travel unscathed throughout most of the countries of the world.
In my studies of Church • I'M afraid that you lost some credibility for professionalism when you saw fit to publish the article of Peter Stanford in the issue of April 5. For me it was just an exercise in nihilism, offering just nothing to your paying customers.
Drop-out nuns are a penny-adozen outside the church today and their contribution to constructive thought is a dirge and a whinge. Karen Armstrong's delayed adolescence and chronic breakdown arc hardly the sorts
the future tense.
To ensure maximum annoyance to the nuns, the sinner would drop her carefullynurtured French accent and lapse into excruciating Franglais. A full-throated "MAY DAMN"! made quite an impressive start.
Ah, yes, I remember it well (after 50 years). I was nearly expelled after being found with Eric (or "Little by Little") during a retreat. It was all GOOD CLEAN FUN, and most of my contemporaries seem to be reasonably well-adjusted.
Cecil)? M Doughty
7, Gray Court, Richmond, Surrey
lies there. If she was so unhappy — why did her parent's leave her there? If she was set on a scientific career why did her parents leave her there? Teaching about sex is also the parents job.
Pam Howell Yew Tree House,
Bewdley history, l have never thought of the subject as divine, how could it be, when it is after all the history of very normal hutnan beings? Right from the Apostles, many of them were found "wanting". Church history is precisely that, the history of the Church, with all its faults and failings, over 2000 years! The miracle is that in spite of all this she still stands triumphant.
Karen says she has only discussed the love which the Church failed to give her late in life. But has she ever asked herself how much love she gave? For love begets love!
Mrs Agnes Richardson
8, Westeria Terrace, Beacon Park, Plymouth of experiences we have the slightest interest in, and one can look in vain for anything positive in them.
Stanford's belief that "(she) has now lost her faith, a result of her experiences as a nun . ." is awfully naive. Nuns "lose" their vocation and their faith either because they never had them or because they wanted to lose both.
Fr T J Whiny MSC, Park Orchards, 3114, Australia