Do I think that 90% of the pop including Catholics raising their families but using artificial contraception are thereby involved in intrinsic evil? Do I think that practising gay couples who live their lives well and generously are similarly involved? Simply, sanely, no.

But of course we are all of us involved in the legacy of original sin, which *does* actually affect sex in a specially crucial manner. But the meaning of that, as Donald Mackinnon saw, is that sin lurks are the heart of apparent good, takes us unawares, is tragically elusive.

Just because the totally autonomous secular is a mistake and engenders disaster does not mean that everything novel that appears in this sphere is automatically wrong or not covertly still working through Christian implications. Discrimination is always needed.

Just to make it clear: I have always thought all of the above. Critique of modernity needs to be sane, not unhinged, elucidating its profound hidden errors, nor predictably opposing every single one of its open innovations. As to all the confessional stuff, I’m uninterested.

‘Mere Christianity’ is enough for me. And I don’t think that faith implies the kind of tonality of some of the responses on these issues.