It is a cause of genuine rejoicing that Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Anglican bishop of Rochester, has been received into the Catholic Church on the feast of St Michael and All Angels. He was received by Mgr Keith Newton, the Ordinary of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, the body that allows Anglicans seeking full communion with the Church to preserve their characteristic forms of worship. The Ordinariate was established by Pope Benedict and it allows former Anglicans to maintain something of their identity within the Catholic Church. It is a sign of real diversity in unity. It is hoped that Cardinal Vincent Nichols will ordain Dr Nazir-Ali as a Catholic priest at the Ordinariate’s church in Warwick Street. Because he has two sons it may be difficult to ordain him as a bishop, but surely this is not an insuperable obstacle; in the early Church, married men and fathers were ordained bishops. Indeed, one of the most formidable leaders of the English Church, Cardinal Manning, was a childless widower.