We live in an age – thank God – where more and more professions and institutions are being called to account, and bad practices are being brought out into the open. But the findings of a report into unsafe medicines and medical implants by Baroness Cumberlege released last week are still shocking. Indeed, Cumberlege says that in many years of conducting reviews and inquiries, she has “never encountered anything like this”.

The system she has investigated failed in many ways – but mostly because it refused to pay attention to the concerns of its users. The arrogance of those who ran it was breathtaking. “There is an institutional and professional resistance to changing practice even in the face of mounting … concerns,” she wrote.

There is a deep vein of misogyny embedded in this particular system – “an added dimension,” Cumberlege calls it. Overall, she concludes, “mistakes are perpetuated through a culture of denial, a resistance to no-blame learning, and an absence of overall effective accountability”. All of this, as we know, applies to the Catholic Church and to the way it has handled the abuse of children by priests. The same culture of denial applies to the way it responds to other critical issues, including the failure to allow equal roles and responsibilities to women, its attitude towards people with other than heterosexual orientations, and its attitude towards people who have come out of unworkable marriages and want to remain fully connected to the Church.