Welcome to the ecumenical plateau – again! Every year the Christian Churches and denominations of these islands come together to mark the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and there is plenty to celebrate. It is a very comfortable plateau to be on, with all previous animosities forgiven and forgotten. The disruption of Christian disunity has been tamed by familiarity.

And so the ecumenical movement has stopped moving. The Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church are equally complicit in this conspiracy to uphold the status quo. Their very existence side by side, each implicitly asserting that it is the Church of God founded by Christ, is a contradiction that ought only to be tolerable if there are active steps to resolve it. To consider it a settled state falls not far short of the sin of schism, of which both sides could be accused.