Why dismiss a Catholic priest for being Catholic?

They’re just kids! What’s your problem? This has become the default reaction of a whole raft of clever people to anyone who gets hot under the collar about the fashion for students banning things in universities: speakers, ideas, books. It was ever this way, they say, and besides, sometimes the kids are right.

The little episode of righteous vandalism at Manchester last week was a case in point. Students painted over a mural of Kipling’s ‘If’ in the newly renovated union building, on the grounds that he ‘dehumanised people of colour’. Kipling was a racist, they insisted, a man of Empire. Out came the whitewash and on top of it went ‘Still I Rise’ by the American civil-rights activist Maya Angelou. Newspaper columnists raged. Civilised people said, sotto voce: well, what harm was done? Calm down, dear. Don’t take children so seriously.

It’s an enticing thought. But I’m not sure we can rest easy just yet.