Most of them are related to time and timing.
The first difficulty lay in the nature of the beast.
Once the series was underway, new pieces needed to be topical.
It would be possible to have a few articles on long-standing issues up the sleeve if there was nothing for Ballantyne to comment on.
But the twenty-four-hour news cycle tends to deliver issues that need almost immediate comment.
The Sanctity of the Confessional was an obvious case.
A news report where a convicted paedophile allegedly attended confession over a thousand times and re-offended shaped Ballantyne's position on the subject.
I needed to finish (and publish) the piece while the matter was relatively fresh in the collective memory.
Six months down the track, the story behind it would be ancient history.
And before that story appeared, the background material needed to find its way out there.
Until it did, some bloke sounding off about something that was currently front-and-centre wouldn't make sense. There would be inevitable questions.
Who is this bloke?
Where's he coming from?
What's the agenda?