Contemporary Catholicism in northern Europe seems divided into two camps: in one, there is the kind of Catholic who thinks the Church is the answer, and in the other there is the kind who thinks the Church is the problem. Nonetheless, I am all for resisting the kind of easy binaries that would plot Catholics on an opinion spectrum determined by a secular perception of the kinds of issues that matter.

The media do not on the whole care about the fact that all Catholics tend to agree on some startlingly contentious issues: the real presence of a long-dead Palestinian in every Catholic church, for example – a belief so apparently lunatic and so pivotally world-shaping you might think it would attract more attention. But a polarised Catholic Church, fractured by angry dissent, serves a media agenda that needs crisis to thrive.

But, while desperate to avoid the lazy narrative of “two camps”, it is hard to resist a real polarisation about where “the problem” is located. Francis’ and Benedict’s different interpretations of the clerical sex abuse crisis seem to illustrate this. Francis sees a culture of “clericalism” as the source of the sickness; Benedict sees it in the hyper-sexualisation of contemporary secular societies. In the one diagnosis, it looks like it is the Church that needs to change; in the other, it is the world.