Edmund: This is the Jane Herrington? Percy: Yes. Edmund: Jane - bury-me-in-a-Y-shaped-coffin - Herrington. Percy: I.., I think maybe there are two Jane Herringtons. Edmund: No... Tall, blond, elegant? Percy: Right, that's right. Edmund: Goes like a privy door when the plague is in town?

Statutory-rape laws concerning voluntary intercourse would probably be taken off the books, though both young boys and young girls could still be protected against any sexual abuse by older persons.

I have always wondered how the world, which is very large, can fit into something as small as a handbasket. To deepen my confusion, I’m not even sure I know what a handbasket is. Aren’t all baskets in fact handbaskets, and if they are, isn’t the prefix hand wholly unnecessary? We should probably say: “The world is going to hell in a basket,” although that sounds even worse, doesn’t it?

Anyone who writes on the contemporary Catholic Church is in the debt of Peter Hebblethwaite, Vaticanologist extraordinary and expert on modern Catholicism.