The issue of our embassy to the Holy See won't go away. Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore now finds himself attacked as "an anti-Catholic bigot" and it has sparked a mini-rebellion among the Fine Gael backbenchers.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Mr Gilmore's decision to close the embassy wasn't motivated by anti-Catholic bigotry.
There had to be cuts made to our diplomatic representation overseas and embassies that help to generate trade or to disperse aid in developing countries were not considered. That left a relative handful of candidates for the chop and the embassy to the Holy See was one.
Call me naive, but it is highly unlikely that Mr Gilmore went deliberately gunning for that embassy.
What's more likely is that when it appeared on a list of possible candidates for the chop he accepted it because he believed there would be no public or political backlash due to the publication of the Cloyne Report, and because he himself probably places little enough personal value on our relationship with the Holy See.
But what the closing of the embassy has done is mobilise a portion of whatever is left of Catholic Ireland. It provoked them because of what its closure seems to symbolise and it gave them permission to speak out on an issue for almost the first time since the scandals broke.
The group campaigning for the reopening of the embassy is called 'Ireland Stand Up' and the fact that 73 TDs and senators turned up to a meeting a couple of weeks ago is mildly astonishing.
The Government is now trying to recapture some lost ground. Mr Gilmore was interviewed on Vatican radio the other day, and the Government is saying that if the Pope decides to come here for the Eucharistic Congress in June it will welcome him, although not with anything like the 100,000 welcomes that greeted the queen and US President Barack Obama.
But should the Pope come in the summer?
Interviewed on RTE radio last weekend, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin appeared to think that maybe the time is not yet ripe because the Catholic Church here is not at the right stage of renewal.
He said the Irish hierarchy had invited the Pope to visit, but added: "We haven't got a response. He did say to me that he would be open to coming but he said, and this I agree with, that his coming would have to fit into the overall timetable of the renewal of the church in Ireland. Short-circuiting that programme wouldn't bring the benefits that a papal visit would bring and I am not sure that we are at that stage yet."
On the other hand, Cardinal Sean Brady told 'The Irish Catholic' that he hoped the moment was right.
If the Pope came to Dublin for the Eucharistic Congress what kind of reception would he receive?
Before he went to Britain in September 2010 there was every sign the visit would be a disaster.
There seemed to be huge opposition.
But in the event the visit was a roaring success.
Catholics, who had kept their heads down before he arrived, suddenly took to the streets in huge numbers to greet him.
Something similar happened in both Spain and Germany last year.
The German parliament gave him a two-minute standing ovation.
But for my part I don't think the Pope should come for the Eucharistic Conference.
I don't think the time is quite right.
I think instead he should wait until next year and finish off Pope John Paul II's 1979 visit to Ireland by going to the North.
The atmosphere around such a visit would be totally different from a visit to Dublin this summer.
First and foremost, the visit would be seen as part of the peace process.
It would be seen as the companion to the queen's visit to the Republic last May and the British government would give him an unreserved welcome.
Our own would have to respond in kind.
The Pope would attract a huge crowd to any Mass he would hold in the North.
Hundreds of thousands of Northern Catholics would attend and big numbers from the South would travel North for it as well.
If he then visited Dublin for a smaller event, a feel-good factor would follow him south just as it did when he began his British visit in Scotland 17 months ago before travelling to England.
This would provide a much bigger boost to the renewal of the church in Ireland than coming to the Eucharistic Congress.
So do come to Ireland, Pope Benedict, but wait a few more months, and go North before coming South.