Fr David Sillince, on the shifting of holy days to Sunday (Letters, 14 June), convincingly identifies the seed of dispute – obligation: that for authority, the key thing is the obligation, not the celebration. (The notion would astonish the early Fathers.) What mattered to scribes and Pharisees was every obligation of the law. For Christ, it was compassion for the multitude. True, the rigours of church law have eased and the Church is not “a cruel Church” as an old lady described the Church of her childhood to me. But the mindset remains. A friend of mine told a priest at a gathering about the enthusiastic response to her parish priest’s general absolution service. The priest told the bishop who was also there; he came over, not to hear about the success, but to fi