. . as a decadent import from Italy.
Of course someone should have pointed out to the good prelate that the heathens of India ate with their fingers, as did the infidels of Persia, and that good Christians should seek to become more refined than these barbaric peoples.
The fork appeared in England in the late 1600s but was despised as "unmanly" and condemned by church writers as "insulting to God". It did not become common until the later 1700s.
The modern curved 4 prong fork was invented in Germany in the mid 1700s.