I have never watched Downton Abbey and have thankfully never had to manage a large servants’ hall, but I am pretty certain that secret meetings of the upper servants in the Housekeeper’s Room (or should that be Butler’s Pantry; housekeepers tend to be female) designed to circumvent the known wishes of the family would be a sacking offence.Yet this is what the English bishops did last month when they rejected a request from the Council of Priests, of Hexham and Newcastle diocese, to support the ordination of married men. The bishops’ plenary sessions are held as private meetings and they only tell us what they choose us to know, and we would not even have heard that they had discussed the issue if Bishop Seamus Cunningham had not properly reported back to his clergy