I have heard with deepening sadness accounts of our bishops’ response to the IICSA report on child abuse. They express sorrow about failures, but they do not acknowledge the monumental misuse of power. Unquestioned goes the role of clericalism, misogyny, celibacy, inequality, and the lack of synodal structures which could restore the people of God to their baptismal priestly identity in Christ.

And yet, and yet, we can hope that one day someone will break ranks and admit that root-and-branch change of our Church is needed. He (it will have to be a he) will find himself surrounded by absent friends thronging back to a Church open to transformation, ready to pour the new wine of the following of Christ into new wineskins. But not yet, apparently.