The collocation of title and subtitle in Cardinal Pell’s latest book (Test Everything: Hold Fast to What is Good) is an insult to the spirit of the age—if not a direct insult then at least “offensive to pious ears”, to use a Catholic phrase once applied to the lowest grade of heresy. If you “test everything”, according to modern intellectual sensibilities, surely you thereby find everything wanting, so how can there be anything to “hold fast” to? The thought, however, is not itself from Pell. The title and subtitle together are a quotation from St Paul’s first letter to the…