Twenty-five years ago, St John Paul II concluded his encyclical on the moral life by pointing to the martyrs. There are always circumstances when the requirements of the moral law, the cost of discipleship, seems too high. It’s tempting to think that the moral law is too difficult, or even that man is incapable of the full demands of discipleship. The Council of Trent taught that such conclusions were anathema, but John Paul went back further to St Paul, arguing that such thinking “empties the Cross of Christ of its power”.