A chat last year with a leading public figure in Scotland continues to resonate. As we discussed the quality of political debate, he suddenly interrupted his train of thought and asked: “Where is the Catholic Church in all of this? Why have they stopped being part of the national conversation?”

To my knowledge, this individual isn’t a Catholic and I’m not certain that he belongs to any of Scotland’s other Christian denominations. When I asked him why this mattered in a secular society, he said that the Church has always spoken with authority and helped form the nation’s moral and ethical conscience. “Even people who aren’t Catholic look to your church for its wisdom in some matters.”

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that he was right in his analysis. The Catholic Church in Scotland has virtually sunk without trace from the public life of the nation and taken a vow of silence. There are occasional dispatches from what remains of its former – and very well-respected – media office, but these are timid, cautious and scarce.

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They come in the form of collective statements from ‘The Bishops Conference’, which, for the uninitiated, is the six bishops and two archbishops, who run the Scottish Catholic Church. You will rarely see or hear any of these men in person. They tend to travel incognito under the collective anonymity of ‘The Bishops Conference’. They have virtually no presence on the nation’s airwaves or television broadcasting outlets and seem to have given up on the calling to defend and proclaim the truth in Scotland’s secular marketplace. They have become formless wraiths.

It’s much easier, of course (and a lot less lively) to keep........

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