Did you hear about the paedophile priest?

We live in strange times. The Catholic Church’s traditional obsession with sexual sin has been scoffed at and dismissed, and for many that will be a relief and not before time. For others it serves up an irony that we would do well to note.

Which is?  That the one sin which contemporary Irish society is obsessed with is – you’ve guessed it – sexual sin. A strong line is drawn between consensual sex ( fill your boots and leave them lying at the foot of the bed) and non-consensual sex (rape/sexual abuse).

We are right to condemn sexual predators or people who would use sex for their own satisfaction, showing no regard for the welfare of the people they prey on. The level of domestic violence against women often involves sexual violence, and again it’s despicable.

But here. Aren’t there any other sins we can be appalled by? What about domestic violence against women with no sexual element? What about wealth and poverty? In the South of Ireland, the top 10% own roughly five times more than the bottom half combined. Why don’t we wake up every day and demand a fairer world?

And did you know that 136 people died on the roads of the South this year 2026?  If a poison was circulating and killing that number of people, you can be sure that the government would act sharpish and rearrange things so that the poison was banned. But get into your car and potentially drive it at 110 mph  – well, we’ll make disapproving noises but we’ll not do anything radical to make it stop.

In the good old/bad old days, The News of the World  frequently carried headlines like ‘Disgusting scenes at vicar’s tea-party, and would then go on to give every salacious detail of the disgusting stuff to its readers. Are we in danger of conserving our disgust for sexual crimes, especially the ones that get detailed, while overlooking terrible crimes at home and abroad involving poverty, hunger,  massive violence (think Gaza) and capitalism itself which encourages these every-man/woman for him/herself, look after your own and to hell with the bloody immigrants?