WHILE many will accept that Barry McElduff didn't deliberately set out to hurt the relatives of the Kingsmill massacre by putting a loaf on his head, the same people will be less likely to believe he fell on his sword by resigning the West Tyrone seat.
An uncomfortable week for Sinn Féin was capped on Sunday by an RTÉ radio interview with Alan Black, the sole survivor of the 1976 attack in which 10 Protestant workmen were murdered.
Mr Black, who said he was in no doubt about the former Sinn Féin MP's intention to mock, was dignified and free of bitterness as he recalled the slaughter on a south Armagh roadside 42 years ago.
As you would imagine, the detailed horror of that night remains vivid, and the hurt has abated little, if at all, in the intervening years.
The contrast between the Kingsmill victim's moving, graphic testimony and the Twitter high jinx that brought memories of the massacre again to the fore could not have been more marked.
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Similarly, when Sinn Féin's sanction of a three-month suspension on full pay was placed alongside Alan Black's lifetime of suffering, it underlined how weak and indecisive the party's response had been.
North of the border Sinn Féin had hoped the episode was finally petering out but in the south, where the party has its sights set on government, the RTÉ interview served to turn up the heat considerably, leaving the leadership with little option but to jettison Mr McElduff.
Had its actions matched the sentiments voiced a week earlier by Declan Kearney then it would have perhaps gained some credit and avoided an embarrassing flip-flop that only highlights a lack of resoluteness.
This was a challenge for northern leader Michelle O'Neill that went beyond repeating the 'respect, equality, integrity' mantra and she appears to have failed spectacularly with a wishy-washy response.
Leader-in-waiting Mary Lou McDonald too failed to grasp the nettle with categorical condemnation.
With a change of leadership less than a month away, Sinn Féin hopes to cast itself increasingly as responsible, post-conflict party with appeal in the Republic beyond its traditional base.
The tension between a party with paramilitary antecedents and the progressive political force it aspires to be will inevitably surface every now and then, but in future the party's response needs to be less muddled.
And far from closing this unsavoury chapter, Barry McElduff's resignation signals a by-election in the coming weeks and what in all likelihood will be a bitter, acrimonious campaign, where more than four decades on, the Kingsmill massacre will remain the key talking point on the doorsteps.
Sadly, for all the column inches and airtime dedicated to the atrocity, we will be no nearer to banishing the heartbreak and bitterness that the crimes of the past continue to fuel.
Barry McElduff announces his resignation:
