Proof of the pudding is Archbishop Christoph Schonborn of Vienna who, in the widely read magazine, Thema Kirche shares his insight that there might just be some link between priestly celibacy and the staggering levels of child abuse among male Catholic clergy. This sort of profound thinking that only be developed after decades immersed in philosophy, theology and a range of languages. The average punter just could not have made the connection.

Who could have anticipated that problems might occur if you recruit young men to an organisation, freeze their sexual development at the stage it was in their late teens and then expect them to work with children and female parishioners as if the whole of human evolutionary history didn’t apply to them?

Schonborn’s point is uncontroversial to any reasonable person. Looking for possible causes of child abuse he writes: “These include the issue of priest training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution…It also includes the issue of priest celibacy and the issue of personality development.”

A brief bit of research with Professor Google failed to find any instances of sexual abuse by Church of Ireland clergy. There are two probable reasons for this. The first is that they are a rarer species than Catholic and they are not obliged to be celibate. In other denominations which allow their ministers to be more fully human rates of child abuse don’t seem much better or worse than any other group of people.

Compulsory celibacy was a bit of an unwelcome bolt on to the Christian Church. St Peter had a mother in law and the early leaders all married in societies which saw celibacy as downright peculiar. This helpful timeline chronicles the creeping misogynism of the Church but doesn’t make enough of how worries about landholding and dynasties drove the imposition of celibacy. It’s a pretty good example of how ideology is influenced by the material concerns of the world.

Cardinal Claudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy offers convincing proof of the unrealistic streak in senior clergy. He says: "priestly celibacy is a gift of the Holy Spirit". A lot of priests must wonder if he has kept the receipt so that they can change his present for something they actually want.

Casual readers might have inferred from Schonborn’s comments that he is a little bit sceptical about celibacy. Absolutely not! His spokepreson, Erich Leitenberger, issued a “clarification” claiming that the cardinal was not "in any way seeking to question the Catholic Church’s celibacy rule". That clears things up.

According to figures from the Diocese of Boston it had 1408 priests in 2006. Thirty years previously it had 2401. That’s quite a drop and the numbers are bound to keep declining. In the same period the number of seminarians dropped from 132 to 31. The Catholic Church might be able to recover some ground by tighter vetting, closer cooperation with child protection authorities and more rigorous procedures but it’s sentencing itself to a long slow fade if it remains committed to clerical celibacy.