The Guardian has a piece on the aftermath of the resignation of Bishop Kieran Conry, written by Andrew Brown, who is a journalist I much admire. (Incidentally, so did the bishop: he even quoted him once in a pastoral letter.) Brown’s analysis of the Catholic Church is that it is in disarray, wracked by infighting and riven by culture wars. There is quite a lot of truth in what he says, but – and this is the interesting bit – this sort of article could have been written by any non-Catholic journalist in the last 40 years. I well remember, about 30 years ago, watching a programme by Gerald Priestland which took exactly the same view. Indeed, if you were to opine that there were fault lines in Catholicism, most people would have agreed with you 30 years ago. And they would have agreed with you at the time of the Second Vatican Council, as well as the First Vatican Council and indeed the Council of Trent. In fact, was there ever a time when the Church was strong and united? Well, yes there was. Remember this?