Was it only I who found the fact that the Catholic Church welcomed into its fold a bunch of deserting Anglicans on the day dedicated to women (or the one just after) supremely ironic?

The Anglicans jumped ship because they were objecting to the fact that women were being ordained as Bishops and they (the jumping Anglicans, not the Lady Bishes) found open arms at the Vatican, the idea being that they are parked in a sort of holding pen, to be formally baptised at the end of Lent, presumably after having given up on enough of what they fancy to make them eligible to become full Catholics.

It hardly bears thinking about, really, that in 2011 eligibility to being a Bishop depends on the arrangement of your chromosomes. I can understand that back in the days of Henry VIII (I'm watching 'The Tudors' at the moment, highly recommendable) the fact that the Apostles were all men would be taken as ex cathedra validation of the men-only thesis, but ideas have moved on since then.

For instance, you no longer get excommunicated if you propound the evil notion that Earth orbits the Sun. Nor are you consigned to the stocks if you fail to condemn Darwin and all his works (unless you're in the Deep South) and divorce is deemed acceptable in civil society, where folk of a religious bent do not seek to impose their personal morality on all and sundry.

Well, not so much the last one anyway, as evidenced by the fervour with which our Honourable Representatives debated the manner in which they were going to pass the buck to us and avoid doing their job.

Could someone explain how Labour's question cements only "acceptable divorce" to the statute books, incidentally? Surely, whatever we the great unwashed vote in May, Parliament, being supreme in this regard, could vote in quickie-divorce if it was thus minded?

Not that the Government's question is any better, as far as I am concerned, because MPs should decide on this not us, but at least it has the virtue of clarity when it comes to taking the people's temperature.