Then I apologise unreservedly: my 'only being satirical' plea clearly didn't take — ANY MORE THAN TIERNAN'S EVER SHOULD HAVE DONE.

Mind you, I do still feel the Church has more to apologise for, even after all this time, over the Inquisition than the Jews have over the Crucifixion — that was the Romans, the legal authority for the time-being appointed; except that Pilate bottled out and, literally we are told, washed his hands of the whole matter to move the responsibility on to someone else - ie Jesus's opponents within what was HIS OWN FAITH, not the whole of that community by any means. While the whole Church was complicit in the Inquisition — Galileo's forced retraction didn't happen in Spain, did it?