Things change and yet, they remain the same. We have disposed of our old moral order and consigned its guardians to history. The brutish diktat of the parish priest is gone, and the blackthorn stick with which he bate trysting lovers a thing of humour, of whimsy, of tourist tat. Yerrah, ‘tis great. We’re all modern now.

And yet, it seems we have merely swapped one set of moral custodians for another. Few priests there may be, but we’re laden down with moralists and righteousness. The old Church is dying on its feet, but there’s another in its place, the media.

Few journalists ride bikes, it’s true. So they don’t do what the old parish priests did in the 30s and 40s, travel the length and breadth of the parish looking for sexual misconduct in the hedges and fields, whacking blue shit out of anyone misfortunate enough to court their gaze. But there the differences end.

The media has arrogated the conceits of the old Church. You may not fear God anymore mate, but the avengers await nonetheless. Judgement Day isn’t the last day anymore, it’s the day the tabloids get a whiff of your misdemeanours, your saucy secrets, your intimacies.

Of course, I am not condoning the tax cheats, the speeding politicians, the corrupt councillors or the nude GAA players. I am not condoning anyone who downloads child porn from the internet. But I find the ugliness, the crassness, the viciousness and begrudgery evident in recent weeks to be utterly appalling.

You all know the stories. The most widely known is that of Ballymaloe chef Tim Allen. Why was he the subject of such attention? Why was he named before he was found guilty? Because he and his wife are ‘celebrities’, the mullahs of the press wanted his head on a plate, preferably with an apple shoved in his mouth. Towards that end, they boohed at Judge Patwell, despite the consistency of his decisions, and they hounded everyone associated with Tim Allen, especially his family. Though none of them were involved in downloading child porn, they were still deemed fair game.

How many of the wrathful righteous actually considered the game that was afoot? It is inarguable that a person paying money to a child porn site is collaborating in the exploitation of children. But there are degrees of guilt. It is, I think, the moral certainty that grates the most, the ranting that a jail sentence was too lenient, as though the horror of having to face those cameras, that baying mob, that inquisition, those quasi-informed commentaries by opinionated columnists, that life sentence wasn’t punishment enough.

A moral philosopher would be more ambivalent. I mean, from that point of view, what’s the difference between fantasising about having sex with, say someone other than your partner, and actually doing it? As Jimmy Carter said, I have often committed adultery in my mind.

Well, apparently, it’s okay to fantasise about whatever turns you on, however outrageous, so long as you don’t have evidence of what you’ve been thinking of. Having that evidence, say in the form of pictures, makes it worse, a crime, or perhaps, in the eyes of the media, a sin.

The Internet is an engine of involvement and guilt. Once you work out how to traverse it, and gain faith in the payment processes, those sick and shitty fantasies are suddenly within reach. Indeed, they come looking for you. Each and every day the messages come, slip-sliding their way onto your plate of possibilities. Slip once and you’re never free.

Where the boundary lies is never clear. Where, in this domain, do we place chatlines and personal adverts? What about top shelf magazines and videos? Where is the boundary between erotica and porn?

And what is the impact of technological change? Many of the pleaders and bleeders who dominated the media for several days after Tim Allen’s conviction argued his complicity in the actual degradation of the children involved in the images he downloaded, and as I said above, that’s inarguable.

But suppose the images were digitally created, that is to say, if the creation of the image didn’t involve the exploitation or degradation of a child... would that be different? Anyone who marvelled at Gollum in the Two Towers will understand what I mean. We have moved into a strange new world, one which our values, our laws and our behaviours have yet to comprehend. It calls for a whole new paradigm.

Regrettably, neither the mob nor their new Church seem capable of discriminating between the different layers of meaning and behaviour, much less engaging in the development of new ideas and ways of being. They’re still back there in the old days, exposing the randy vicar, bonking the barmaid and wagging the finger.

The Hog