DUNNES STORES - REMOVED ROSARY STYLE NECKLACES UPON COMPLAINTS FROM CATHOLICS
 
I would like to express my alarm at the decision recently taken by Dunnes Stores to stop stocking necklaces designed as rosary beads. The vast majority of people using your store have no problem with this and you are giving in to a minority of intolerant people. It is your market you should be concerned about.
 
In the first instance, the necklaces are just necklaces. They are not real rosary beads and they are not blessed. Rosary beads are nothing until they are blessed. Also, what would be wrong with a person using real rosary beads as a decoration in a devotional way? Is it any different from a person wearing blessed miraculous medals both as a neck decoration and as a symbol of devotion? Where do you draw the line on decisions like yours? Will Buddha statues now be removed from your shelves? Will revealing clothes be removed as well to suit the strict Christian rules about covering up well to avoid lustful desires outside of wedlock? What about staff members that have to sell these items and thereby promote what their Christian faith tells them is promoting scandal or bad example? Will jewellers have to remove all crosses and stars of David’s and pentagrams (sacred to Witches) from their shelves for these items are sold as jewellery without any regard to their religious symbolism?
 
The people who want the rosary beads off your shelves put faith before people an attitude required by Roman Catholicism (and in fairness, Protestantism) as well. Their faith tells them to believe and feel that anybody that misses Mass and who has deliberate sexual feelings outside of marriage should go to rot in Hell forever if they die. They need total proof to say things like that and when they don’t have it they are claiming that faith is more important than people.  

Pandering to bigotry is not acceptable in a business or political environment.