This is what you get when ‘offensive’ is the shut-up word of the day. You get archbishops complaining that the BBC is reporting on the church, and equating criticism with hostility and bias.

But there are clearly elements or individuals, mainly – as far as I can tell – within news and current affairs, who seem to approach the Catholic Church with great hostility. Certainly the Catholic community is fed up seeing a public service broadcaster using the licence fee to pay unscrupulous reporters trying to re-circulate old news and to broadcast programmes that are so biased and hostile. Enough is enough.

So – what would a friendly and unbiased report on the Catholic church look like then? An admiring enumeration of the Pope’s wardrobe? A fond reminiscence about the warm friendship between priests and choirboys? A ringing endorsement of the Pope’s stand on birth control? Would anything less flattering than that be called ‘offensive’?

It’s familiar stuff, but that doesn’t make it any more reasonable. An unholy alliance between identity politics and obscurantist religion that uses complaints about ‘offense’ to try to establish its right to be beyond criticism. Suck it up, bish. Your church is out there in the world telling billions of people what to do, including whether to have children or not. Claiming immunity on top of all that is really pushing it a bit.