Call the Council
Given the contentious interpretations of Amoris Laetitia, the obscurity at the centre and the fear of “subjective” interpretations if decisions are left to individual bishops, is there not a case for returning to early Church practice and calling Local Councils? With the versatility and unrestricted resources they commanded, they often pointed in their day towards growing consensus on issues in the Church. Of the present opportunities, the synod is unwieldy and, certainly in its first years, was regularly straitjacketed by the Curia, while single bishops’ conferences are bound to give due weight to more national concerns.

Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset

Natural Protestants?
In his book-launch interview (“Outside in”, 4 March), Roy Hattersley says: “We are not by nature a Catholic people. It is all to do with being an island race.”

The assertion that England is non-Catholic by nature is intellectually dubious and historically false. Seeing English slaves for sale in Rome, Pope Gregory I sent a mission to convert the pagan English, the first such Roman mission. Within a century from 597, the English had joined the conquered Welsh (another “island race”) in becoming Catholic, the only kind of Christianity available in the West. Several English kings resigned their thrones to go to die in Rome.

This is not to say that English monarchs before Henry VIII had no political difficulties with the papacy, but the English were Catholic for twice as long as they have officially been Protestant.  

Michael Alexander
Oxford