Dr Mary McAleese, former president of Ireland, and a canon lawyer, is a plain speaker who has the uncomfortable capacity to say the unsayable. There isn’t much about which I agree with her, but in discussing plans for a synod for 2023, she has raised some important points. She wants Catholics throughout the world to send their views on reform of the Church directly to Rome, bypassing the current synodal structure, which works on the model that the people talk, the bishops listen, and the bishops transmit what they hear to Rome.

The principle, vox populi, vox Dei, is a good one, but it assumes that the people speak with one voice. I do not think lay Catholics do. Dr McAleese insists that, “the recognition in Church law of the equality and intellectual freedom of all Church members must be a priority in the national episcopal reports that will go to Rome for the 2023 Synod”. On a great many subjects, I and the formidably intelligent Dr McAleese, for instance, would disagree, and I am not entirely sure how a listening Church would actually accommodate both our views, given our joint equality and intellectual freedom.