Bishop Kieran Conry criticises the “exclusion of an extended family … at Christmas”, saying that the Church embraces “a wider, more inclusive family” (News from Britain and Ireland, 4 January). Yet this latter claim is not borne out in the Church’s representation of the Nativity scene, where the extended family is routinely omitted. The Church needs to rethink its own representation of the nuclear Holy Family: Mary, Joseph and the child Jesus as an independe