Ever since the Greeks, we have been drunk with language! We have made a cage with words and shoved our God inside!''' - Morris West

This was the man who, asked to compare the Greek practice of married clergy with the Roman one of clerical celibacy, had remarked: ‘We think ours works better. After all, if you want labourers in the vineyard, why stop them bringing their lunch?

Other priests, he knew, found an intense pleasure in the raw, salty dialect of peasant conversation. They picked up pearls of wisdom and experience over a farmhouse table or a cup of wine in a workingman's kitchen. They talked with equal familiarity to the rough-tongued whores of Trastevere and the polished signori of Parioli. They enjoyed the ribald humor of the fish market as much as the wit of a Cardinal's dinner table. They were good priests too, and they did much good for their people, with a singular satisfaction to themselves.

In a marriage you need 'compatibility of conscience'.