It would be fair to say that I approached Derek Scally’s book, The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship (Penguin/Sandycove, £16.99), with a good deal of trepidation.

It would be fair to say that I approached Derek Scally’s book, The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship (Penguin/Sandycove, £16.99), with a good deal of trepidation. I put off reading it for as long as possible. I mean, how depressed did I want to be? Actually, the book is a good deal more nuanced than I gave the author credit for – he’s the Irish Times’ Berlin correspondent – and the tone is more valedictory and elegiac than aggressive and secular-triumphalist.

But the one chapter where I sniggered in recognition was where he talked about the religious education textbooks he had as a pupil in 1980s Ireland, the “Children of God” course for primary schools and “The Christian Way” series for secondary schools.

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