The row is embarrassing for the Archbishop because, although Mr Noon was dismissed in 2003, details have emerged only days after Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor wrote in a letter to The Times: "The Church has consistently spoken out against any discrimination against homosexual persons, and will continue to do so." He was writing to counter suggestions that the deeply held Catholic faith of Ruth Kelly might be at odds with her new role as Equality Minister.

"I don't think it is divisive," he said of his own views. "I think the people who have brought in the innovations are often divisive.

"If they were really concerned about unity they wouldn't have brought in the innovations which they know will be resisted on conscientious grounds."

More Christians were attending church on any given Sunday in the Third World, primarily Africa, than the rest of the Western world combined.

The symbolic vote came after an impassioned eight-hour debate in which more than 90 peers spoke. Peers, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, attacked Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill which would give doctors the power to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to allow terminally ill people to take their own lives.

Long concerned with rates of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and absentee fathers, we have recently watched with extreme alarm the growing trend of some courts to make marriage something it is not: an elastic concept able to accommodate almost any individual preference. This does not so much modify or even weaken marriage as abolish it. The danger this betokens for family life and a general condition of social justice and ordered liberty is hard to overestimate.