He appeared on L’Infedele with Gad Lerner on La 7 on Saturday and on Porta porta on RAI Uno on Tuesday. Just before the latter, he had also been the principal protagonist in Bondiplus on TVM.

Speaking rather superficially, one could say that two in the panel of four were vociferously in Mr Buttiglione’s favour and denounced the threatened contrary vote by the Commission as being against the freedom of speech, which is one of the most marked characteristics of European democracy. These were former Chief Justice Giuseppe Mifsaud Bonnici, who told viewers he had watched L’Infedele but failed to make the point about a Freemason coming in as a Catholic was forced out, and Dr Andre Camilleri who was very balanced in his statements, and even expressed criticism of some of the stands taken by Mr Buttiglione.

Ranged generically against Mr Buttiglione were Marie Briguglio and Professor Kenneth Wain, who with varying nuances stated that Mr Buttiglione’s main fault lay in not following what has become the principal trend in Europe.

But one side and the other failed to distinguish between the two main points on which the case against Mr Buttiglione was mounted: that the two statements he was charged with (one in which he said that homosexuality for him is a sin, and the other where he said that a woman should have the right to have children and to be protected by a man) were very dissimilar between themselves.

It has been proved that while the first statement by Mr Buttiglione was his pondered reply to a direct question by the select committee, the second statement was a kind of mistaken analogy he had made in an obscure interview to show the relations between Europe and the US as between a woman and her husband.

For a designate Commissioner, already under scrutiny for his well-known deeply held religious views, to speak so flippantly tells volume about the person and it was this fact which at the end played its part in the European Parliament’s decision.

Contrary to what was said on L’Infedele, this is no crusade against Catholics, for there are other declared and practising Catholics on the Commission, but rather a vote of censure against a man who, although a professor, does not always show diplomacy and tact in his speeches and public declarations.