There is little less dignified than a street fight between drunken old men. For my sins I have witnessed these more than once, where losing combatants who were too out of shape to fight like gentlemen resorted to cheap shots, childish wrestling moves and even, on one occasion, hair-pulling (though both fighters were almost bald). One feels shame even looking at such a spectacle: it seems too much like the Vatican Curia.
The Catholic Church seems to be in a “culture war”, of the sort that has been tearing apart American universities since the 1990s. Or perhaps it’s the other way round, and the universities are currently going through a civil war of the sort that has all but destroyed the institutional Church since the end of the Second World War.
