Spare a thought for Chris Coghlan, who has learned to his horror that not only is the Pope a Catholic, his own priest is one too. The Liberal Democrat MP, who voted to legalise assisted suicide, attends St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Dorking. He complains to the Observer that Father Ian Vane ‘publicly announced at Mass that he was… denying me Holy Communion as I had breached Canon Law’. Coghlan believes this represents a ‘completely inappropriate interference in democracy by religious authorities’.

If you’re not a Catholic, at this point you’re thinking one of two things: ‘No thanks, I’ll leave the Papists to their internal disputes’, or ‘Canon Law would be a cracking name for a courtroom series about a priest turned barrister’. But stick with me, there’s something for everyone here. 

By his own admission, the Dorking and Horley MP was well aware of the Church’s opposition to Kim Leadbeater’s Bill. He was ‘deeply disturbed to receive an email from my local priest four days before the vote… saying if I voted in favour I would be “an obstinate public sinner” [and] complicit in a “murderous act”.’ Now, that’s how I like my priests. Spitting doctrine like fire, not some hippie-boomer Father Mulcahy type spouting happy-clappy 1970s nonsense. 

Father Vane explicitly told Coghlan that, were he to vote for Leadbeater’s Bill, it would be ‘a clear contravention of the Church’s teaching’ and would ‘leave me in the position of not being able to give you Holy Communion, as to do so would cause scandal........

© The Spectator