Would I recommend the life of a priest to a youngster? In this sixtieth year of my own priesthood I not only share the doubts expressed by a mere golden jubilarian (Letters, 19 May), but I am quite certain I would not. 

Just as we have learned no longer to deny normal childhood and adolescence to future priests by isolating them in junior seminaries, so now we need also to appreciate the paramount value of conventional tertiary and university education, and of industrial and business experience, in the life of future priests. The life of a priest is wonderful, but from its outset it calls today for a deeper emotive maturity, a humbler intellectual approach,  a less rigid set of legal parameters, and a more all-embracing spiritual and cultural understanding than men in their mid to late twenties, who for over seven years have been isolated from their maturing peer group, can realistically be expected to possess.