In a recent address to liturgists Pope Francis opined, with all his magisterial authority, that the reforms effected after the Second Vatican Council – the second most extensive experiment in iconoclasm in Christian history – are now ‘irreversible’.

One can see why he would wish that it were so.

But experience – not least in the Church of England – persuades one that this is probably not the case. The Holy Father needs to be reminded that there, within less than a hundred and fifty years, this:

had changed into this:

And there was little or nothing that anyone could do about it.