Only women and married priests can halt decline
The Catholic Church is in decline. The clergy are getting old, the religious orders are dying out altogether and on any given Sunday only one in five Catholics is going to Mass - in spite of the fact that the Commandments of the Church say it as a sin to miss it.
All of this presents problems. When the bishop presumes to tell politicians what Catholics think on certain issues, for instance, who can he really presume to be speaking for? Certainly not for all the people who identify themselves as Catholic.
They include people who interpret the rules for themselves; many who have had pregnancy terminations - which by Canon Law effects instant excommunication. They include former paramilitaries who take communion, but have determined for themselves that they were morally right to kill, whatever the Church says.
And they include cultural Catholics. I am probably one of those myself. I find myself at Mass for weddings and funerals and know the prayers and responses, but the last person I would turn to for moral guidance would be a priest.
But the Church has bigger problems still. It is running out of clergy faster than it is running out of believers.
Of 160 priests in the diocese of Down and Connor, which includes Belfast, about one in five is under the age of 50.
The obvious solution to the shortage of priests in future is to ordain women and invite back those priests who have left to get married or form relationships. The alternative is to have travelling priests who consecrate the Eucharist, say once a month, and leave it to Eucharistic ministers to lead prayer services around the Communion service.
And that will lead to radical change. The weekly service will not be a Mass. And the celebrant at the front of the church will most likely be a woman.
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