If, as you report (Church in the World, 17 October), Pope Francis is deeply concerned about the German synod’s focus on the reduction of clerical power, sexual abuse, the role of women in the Church and priestly celibacy, on the basis that these are only “political questions”, then that may go a long way to explain why, under his pontificate, progress on these issues has been so unsatisfactory.

His recent letter to the German bishops warned them “that structural reforms which merely adapted to modern times were not the way forward”, yet he himself continues to tinker with the curial structure which has been the cause of so many of the ills that afflict the Church and block reform.

It is not the German Synod that is “deforming and damaging” the Gospel by addressing these urgent issues, but, as so often, what the Dominican theologian Yves Congar called “the Roman Idol”.