Last Sunday, when riots and violence were occurring in the Muslim world, RTÉ chose to headline its six o'clock radio news with a named parish priest stepping aside from ministry because of an allegation dating back to the 1970s. It was the third occasion in recent times that RTÉ headlined such a story, writes Breda O'Brien
It is simply impossible to imagine an allegation against anybody other than a religious or priest being treated in this way. There would be public shock if an unproven allegation against Joe Bloggs, childcare worker, became the lead story on the news.
From 2000 to 2005, there were a total of 44 allegations of child abuse made against childcare workers. To my knowledge, none of these allegations was run as a lead story on RTÉ.
This is not an attempt to blacken childcare workers, who do an often thankless job. Most of the allegations were proven to be unfounded. It is simply an attempt to point out that a person's right to a good name until proven guilty of a crime seems to be waived when it comes to priests and religious.
If the person in question is cleared of wrongdoing and restored to ministry, will we see that reported as a top story on the evening radio news? It is tempting to invoke the immortal response attributed to Michael Bailey by James Gogarty.
For too long, clergy and religious were treated with undue deference. It was not healthy. It is not healthy, either, that they are now considered fair game, to the extent that a person's right to his or her good name counts for nothing.
To highlight a person in this way is wrong. If it happened to, say, a teacher, there would be a robust response on the part of the teaching unions. When it comes to priests and religious, there is a slightly sickening sound to be heard these days: the thud, thud, thud of a body being kicked while on the ground.
The same news bulletin consigned an appeal by Denmark for calm in response to the cartoons of Muhammad to second place, then ran a story about Mary Hanafin and religion in primary schools, followed by a piece about former bishop Éamonn Casey's return to Ireland. What is the public interest value in running story after story about Dr Casey, who is showing many of the frailties associated with his age? Is it public interest, or prurience? Dr Casey made a mistake, a very serious one. He abused a privileged position - and the woman in question was very vulnerable - and then for years he neglected his son. He has apologised humbly, and the mood of the Irish people is to forgive.
However, there is no mood in the Irish media to forget. It used to be said that the Catholic Church was obsessed with sex. It might be more accurate to say that the media is now obsessed with sexual misdemeanours, alleged or proven, by Catholic clergy. So obsessed, that one of the biggest stories worldwide this week was relegated to second place.
However, the four stories mentioned on the RTÉ bulletin do have one thing in common: they all relate to the appropriate way to treat religion in the public square. The central question regarding the publication of the cartoons of Muhammad is whether the action represents a valid right to exercise freedom of expression, or a provocative attempt to demonise a founder of a religious faith. It is not as simple as it might at first appear. Even the philosopher most invoked when it comes to freedom of expression, John Stuart Mill, believed that there were limits to that freedom. "The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance." (On Liberty)
"Nuisance" seems a very inadequate term when we consider the devastating results of the publication, ranging from some people dying to others losing their livelihoods due to boycotts of Danish goods. Of course, the cartoons were a gift to authoritarian regimes, who would much prefer to have their citizens riot about cartoons than have them rioting about the abuses imposed by the regime.
Similarly, they were seized upon with glee by radical Islamists, who use them to "prove" that the alleged war on terror is in fact a war on Islam.
Extreme reactions, although catastrophic, are still the province of a tiny minority of Muslims.
They allow so-called liberals to justify the publication of the cartoons on the grounds that not to do so is to give in to the most repressive of bullying tactics.
They allow them to characterise gratuitous offence as an exercise of a fundamental freedom. Such reactions allow liberals to dismiss the genuine hurt of moderate Muslims as simply a failure to understand the underpinnings of Western culture Muslims cannot understand why it is acceptable to demonise their religion.
One Irish Muslim asked plaintively last week whether Christians would like to see the Virgin Mary portrayed as a prostitute. Er, that's been done, actually, as has soaking crucifixes in jars of urine, and making millions out of a book that claims Christ was married, and that the church has knowingly engaged in a violent, misogynistic fraud for two thousand years.
It is odd to see the same liberals who constantly shout about diversity exhibit a staggering arrogance and insensitivity that amounts to saying that Muslims must accept the norms of western culture. Not that religion should be immune from criticism, or even caricature. For example, Muslims cite as a strength that there has never been an equivalent of either the Reformation or the Second Vatican Council in Islam.
Is it really a strength that laws framed some 1,400 years ago are still rigidly applied today? Similarly, can Muslims credibly demand respect for their own faith while religious freedom is denied to other religions in Islamic states?
Rigorous internal questioning is not necessarily a sign of weakness in any religion. Equally, the media could do with some rigorous self-questioning, too. Does it hide behind values such as freedom of speech, when all it is really doing is being gratuitously offensive and arrogant?
Here in Ireland, is it now acceptable to drop fundamental values such as being innocent until proven guilty, so long as the accused's name is prefixed by Father, Brother or Sister?