Diarmaid Ferriter: Catholic Church remains out of touch There are still powerful bureaucrats in the Vatican who think they know best

In his marvellously acerbic memoir Against The Tide, published in 1986, former minister for health Dr Noël Browne describes an encounter with the Catholic Bishop of Galway Dr Michael Browne in 1951 when the minister was attempting to win support for his Mother and Child scheme: “He handed me a silver casket in which lay his impeccable hand-made cigarettes. ‘These cigarettes,’ he intoned, ‘I had to have made in Bond Street.’ Then he offered me a glass of champagne. ‘I always like champagne in the afternoon,’ he informed me in his rich round voice. My feeling of awe was mixed with a sense of astonishment that this worldly sybarite considered himself to be a follower of the humble Nazarene.”

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