I refer to the excellent editorial on the bishops’ guidelines following the Pope’s exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

The current issue somehow evokes the doctrinal controversy that occasioned the first council of the Church as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 15): a dramatic follow-up to Paul’s ‘unorthodox’ visionary foresight. As if this were not enough, we then have Paul’s own momentously defiant witness, virtually cast in stone: “...a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee.... as to legal righteousness without blame” (Phil 3:4-6). Furthermore, in his letter to the Galatians, Paul records his daring confrontation with Peter in Antioch (Gal 2:11).

Our bishops’ guidelines were the target of the ultraconservative Italian Radio Spada, which also reported in the same context, a Colombian bishop suspending a divinis a priest on his refusing the sacrament to a divorced couple. The entire decree by the South American bishop was also reproduced, rather tongue in cheek.

To those of us who recall the tumult following the promulgation of Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae in 1968, the present tussle should be no surprise.

The upshot then, regrettably, was the departure of some notable dissenting moral theologians. The damage being done to the  Church can hardly be undone: the Lefebvrist so-called ‘Society of St Pius X’, reminiscent of the Anti-Modernist persecution early in the last century, is a very cogent reminder that “Sabbath is made for Man not Man for the Sabbath” (Mark 3:27).

The Jesuit George Tyrrell, banished to Malta in the late 1890s, was one of the victims of that obscurantist campaign: to me he is not a hero but a martyr.

Finally, a merited word of deep appreciation to our bishops for their courage and... wisdom.