Sign of the times

The Vatican has condemned a BBC’s suggestion that religiously “neutral” terms should be used in dating years rather than “BC” and “AD”.

The semi-official newspaper of the Holy See, L’Osservatore Romano, has described the guidance from the BBC’s ethics advisers as “enormous nonsense” and accused the broadcaster of “senseless hypocrisy”.

The guidelines suggested that the modern phrases “the common era” and “before the common era” should be considered as potential replacements for Anno Domini and Before Christ to avoid offending non-Christians.

A question that seldom seems to be asked among those who create these eggshells, on which we must not tread, is: who is likely to be offended?

Is there anybody: anybody that is, who is not an aggressive secularist or Islamist, only out to make mischief with a wholly inauthentic sense of grievance? Surely, if there are people who are so offended, then it is a jolly good thing to offend them.

Just as the BBC no doubt thinks it’s a jolly good thing when people are offended by their "edgy'' comedy or drama productions.

And I bet, by a spooky coincidence, that it’s the same kind of people who are offended by much of the BBC’s output who would quite like to retain “AD’’ and “BC’’ - in other words, traditionalists who are not on the same side as the BBC.

For there are things which the BBC thinks are good things and which it seeks to promote: causes such as European integration, secularism, social democracy and Andrew Marr.

And there are other things of which it disapproves: such as the United States of America, capital punishment, the Conservative Party and the Church of Rome.

Surely now though that the BBC chairman is Chris Patton, a Roman Catholic, the enormous nonsense condemned by L’Osservatore Romano will be ditched.

Or maybe not; maybe Patton’s Roman Catholicism will prove to be as orthodox as his conservatism.