They are always there, available and unassuming, not asking for anything in return. Many still turn to them whenever life’s problems assail and become just too much to carry alone. We confess our sins to them and load them with our misfortunes, expecting solutions and advice. We demand that they constantly serve us and woe betide anyone of them who is found to be wanting.

Due to the sins of a tiny minority (between five to seven per cent of priests have been accused of the horrendous crimes of child and young adult abuse), we are led to believe that most of them are secretly lechers and predators. All talk of mercy and of not being judgemental is thrown to the wind. Not only is sin rightly condemned but the sinner is consigned to hell unceremoniously.

All this comes from lay people, some of whom, according to law court reports, abuse their partner’s children, their nephews and nieces and the young entrusted in their care. It is assumed that 85 per cent of abuse cases occur within the family.

It is also maliciously asserted that these scandals somehow preclude the Church from presenting its teachings regarding moral or social issues. This is tantamount to saying that democracy is a sham and should not be advocated because Adolf Hitler was elected German Chancellor in 1933 as a result of democratically-held elections.

It is correct to remember that no priest teaches in his own name but in that of Jesus Christ, ever holy, ever divine. Thus the whisky priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory could absolve sins despite his many misdeeds.

Finally, who of us in that most important forthcoming and inevitable moment of our lives, when lying on our death bed, would dream of calling a journalist, an academic or a priest-baiter to see us safely home, rather than one of those who in their majority lead innocent and chaste lives while continuously being tarnished by the sins of a minority?