People have been emailing me to ask what I think of this.
Of course, it is factually correct about the extreme anticlericalism of the Irish Republic; clericals cannot now be worn on the streets of Dublin for fear of assault, and that has been the case for quite some years.
And the author is grasping towards some understanding of the influence of Jansenism, for I happen to know quite a bit about Jansenism, on the character of Irish Catholicism. Although "grasping towards some understanding" is putting it rather charitably.
But he is, as we all knew, an ecclesiological illiterate, and a theological illiterate in general.
As everyone who is anyone has also always known, and as has never appeared to be any kind of secret, he is a practising homosexual, whose lovers were from time to time known to write for Telegraph Blogs. They were often a great deal younger than he was.
The ecclesiological implications of any debate around homosexuality are, therefore, a topic that he would do very well to avoid. Certainly if he proposes to cast himself as the voice of traditional orthodoxy.
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